


The Rules

by JoCarthage



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Birthday Presents, First Time, Hickies, M/M, Marking, Masturbation, Relationship Negotiation, Sexting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your running your hand down my side</p><p>Stiles quickly corrected his text,</p><p>*You’re.</p><p>Derek replied:</p><p>No warning? Come on. I can’t use my phone until you’re done. Give me a sex</p><p>*sex</p><p>*SEC</p><p>Stiles: Lol</p><p>-- This is the story of how Derek and Stiles managed to avoid having sex until Stiles was 18 and still have fun. UPDATE: The chapter with Stiles' 18th birthday is now up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rules

“Stiles? Stiles!” Stiles just kept the phone by his ear, breathing heavily while he worked his hand. “What are you _doing?_ ” Derek’s voice was tight and low, maybe he was somewhere with the pack; Stiles couldn’t find it in himself to care, he was _so close_.

“I just,” gasp-writhe-gasp, “I just need to hear your voice,” a hint of a whine on that last word, but Stiles tried to keep his voice steady. “I just, can you say something, anything, I’m nearly there,”

“ _We can’t do this_. I _won’t_ do this with you,” and as Derek pulled the phone away from his ear, bringing it down to hang up, he let out a low growl and that did it. Stiles was coming all over his boxers, onto his twin bed’s comforter. He hissed and moaned through it, pushing his ever more delicate dick into his ringed fingers. When he fully subsided, he realized he could hear Derek’s harsh breathing on the line.

It was perfect, soft and rough and utterly taken away. And Stiles felt a core of chill drill down inside of him, knew with total clarity that _he’d fucked up_.

“Derek, I didn’t mean to—“ he began, but Derek cut him off.

“We are not talking about this right now. I _will_ see you tomorrow.” And then _click_ and no more Derek. Stiles cleaned himself off and fell into the sleep of the freshly orgasmed, only kept awake for a few moments longer than usual by the surety of his fuck-up-ery.

\--

Derek waited the entire day until Stiles was out of school, out of lacrosse practice and walking down the deserted hallway between the locker-room and the parking-lot. Stiles rounded a corner and there he was. His footsteps echoed to a halt before he realized Derek wasn’t moving, wasn’t looking at him. In the few months they’d been developing these steps, learning to be together, he thought he’d broken Derek of the need to lurk. They’d gotten so good at this, at hugging when they saw each other, at showing casual-but-always-appropriate-PDA. Stiles felt ground-up inside that he’d fucked that up with one ill-conceived phone-call.

He stopped walking and hitched his hip against the side locker, looking at Derek’s shoulder, his too-close fitting t-shirt, his jeans, his boots, anything but his eyes. That’s why he was caught by surprise to find Derek moving closer, no, _prowling_ closer to him. Derek got right up in his space, and Stiles thought for a giddy moment he was going to give him that delayed hug. But then the larger werewolf leaned his head down to Stiles’s ear and said:

“Do you think I don’t think about it?” His breath was ticklish and so close Stiles nearly expected to feel stubble.

“Do you think I don’t imagine you, spread out before me, _under me_?” Stiles’s squeak was neither mature nor sensual, but it was the only noise he could make. Derek braced one hand beside Stiles’s head and the other began to run, palm out, fingertips down, Stiles’s loose t-shirt.

“When I see you like this, _have you_ like this, you think I couldn’t just slide my hand just a little bit further, into your pants and _grip_ you? Or maybe kneel and swallow you down?” His knees dipped him lower and for a terrible-wonderful-impossible moment Stiles thought he was going to do it.

His hips jerked forward and he tried desperately to cover by burying his head in Derek’s shoulder. It didn’t matter that Derek’s hand had stayed exactly where he’d first laid it, fingertips pointing down on Stiles’s roughly-breathing stomach. He could smell Derek around him, smell _everything_. He was just leaning his face in, trying to catch a kiss before this thing changed too much, then Derek was pulling away, leaving Stiles cold and wavering towards him.

“ _But I don’t_ , _Stiles_. I _don’t_ because we have a deal. We agreed, we set down Rules,” he gestured to his phone in his pocket and Stiles’s phone in his, where they each kept The Rules as written.

“ _And you can’t just break them because you’re horny_.” He sounded so frustrated and raw, Stiles felt shame flood over his head and drip down his shoulders. He half-stepped towards Derek and then froze. He ran his shoulders back, stared straight ahead and said:

“I’m sorry, Derek, I didn’t mean to,” Derek huffed, snorted derisively. “I didn’t _plan_ to,” Stiles amended, trying to get them both back on the same page. Derek shook his head: Stiles’ explanation didn’t help.

“I think we need to amend the rules, Stiles.” Stiles began flailing his hands and shaking his head,

“No-no-no, we don’t, I promise, it was a one-time thing, _I’m sorry_ ,” and Derek stepped back into his space, slid his hand down his forearm and interlaced their fingers.

“That’s not what I mean, Stiles. It’s not a punishment, because this is a thing we do together. But that can’t happen again and the Rules will help us remember that.” Stiles stilled, hand-holding always did it for him and Derek knew it. “We need some way to make this work for _both_ of us.”

And Stiles felt a new level of shitty, because while he’d gotten off and gone to sleep, Derek had probably been up, angsting and hard, for more hours than he’d wish on even the infuriating, self-cock-blocking werewolf.

Derek turned to the side and began walking down the hallway, tugging Stiles along and speaking in low tones.

“Here’s what I propose. We still don’t orgasm together, because that’s sex and we’re not doing that.” Stiles nodded: that had always been the core principal of The Rules.

“ _But_ , if you wrote something. It can’t be live or recorded because of laws against that sort of thing, so no video or audio. Because that’s still too close. But if we wrote something down? For each other? We could text. It just has to be—”  
  
Stiles got it: “Asynchronous. So we’re not going at the same time, without being in the same place.”

Derek nodded firmly and tightened his fingers around Stiles’.

“I think that’s what we can do, if you want to.”

They worked out the text of the amendment and tapped it into their phones, showing each other the identical result.

Walking again, they reached the school doors and Stiles pressed his hand to open-bar, then paused. He turned a wicked look to Derek’s dubious face:

“You totally just want me to write us-porn.” Derek sighed dramatically and pushed the door open, tugging Stiles along by his hand while he continued,

“That’s it. This whole scene was about your need for my hot, tight—“ and then Derek pulled him between two cars, shutting him up the best way he knew how: his mouth.

\--

_Your running your hand down my side_

Stiles quickly corrected his text,

_*You’re._

Derek replied:

_No warning? Come on. I can’t use my phone until you’re done. Give me a sex_

_*sex_

_*SEC_

Stiles: _Lol_

_I mean, you could read along and not, you know,_

Derek: _Unlikely._

Then: _I just need to let Boyd know I’m going to afk. I think he has some questions about his work/pack scheduling conflicts_.

Stiles: _Nah, I’m going to keep going. Better hurry up!_

Derek sighed and switched contacts, hastily letting his beta know he would see him tomorrow night and they could work it out in person, all the while the first 100 chars of Stiles’ increasingly graphic texts flipping through the notification bar on his phone. He was half-an-ounce of inner-strength away from tapping one of them, _Just to skim_ , when he growled, hit send to Boyd, and tossed his phone none-too-gently into the couch cushions on the opposite side of the room.

But because he’d closed out so quickly, he’d neglected to turn off the vibrating notifications. He lasted 1 minute listening to the purring of the phone in the couch before he stood up and decided he was going to go for a run. He may have climbed out a window to avoid walking past the buzzing couch to the door.

Hours later, Derek returned, shirt slung over his shoulder and slightly winded. He’d run the entire perimeter of the preserve, then climbed a few trees, then sat in the creek and lifted large rocks until the buzzing in his head finally quieted down.

He approached the silent couch, reaching between its folds to find the phone. It was warm, its little batteries struggling to cool it for hours surrounded by non-ventilated couch. It still had 15%, so he turned the brightness all the way down and crouched on the floor. He began to read.

_Hahaha, I bet this is awkward for you, trying to text Boyd while my pants are off._

_Ok, that was a dick move on my part, but thinking of your irritated face, when it *does* things to me._

_damn, I guess youre going to be strong and silent with this._

_For all I know you’re reading every one of these, and, oh_

_That’s a damn good thought._

_Ok, back to the plot._

_Suck as it is._

_*such._

_Though maybe not really ;-D_

_ok, you’re running your hand down my side. Your hands are superbig, I don’t know if I’ve told you that. Not scary-big, but just, like, capable. Yeah, capable._

_So, your capable hand is on me and you curve it around my waist. Sort of, pressing our hips together. We’re both wearing jeans but not wearing shirts, because it’s my fucking fantasy and I can do what I want._

_I’m. God, what would I be doing, other than panting heavily onto your shoulder. Ok, I’m going to write fantasy-me as studly and confident, just fyi._

_ok, I’m running my hands up your back, rubbing the pads of my fingers into the whorls of your tat. I still haven’t asked you about wherewhywhathow of that, though it might be one of the things We Don’t Talk About._

_Which is bullshit._

_Anyway, so, I press my hand to the back of your neck and we’re kissing and fantasy-you is as good at kissing as real-you, so, you know, it’s a damn good kiss._

_Your hand slides down the back of my pants, and I kind of groan into your mouth, because, you know, skin-on-skin is kind of the best thing ever._

_You like my manly-moaning and kiss me backwards until my shins bump the webframe, and then you—no, you know what, I’m not on bottom for this scene._

_*I* turn us around and *I* press *you* down into my fluffy, warm, clean duvet. It’s mid-summer so it’s warm and light and you look the way you look, which is amazing._

_I crawl onto your lap, straddling your hips and keep kissing you, hands running down your arms until we’re holding hands. Soppy, I know, but your hands fucking do it for me, alright?_

_yep, they do it for me. Going to texting one-handed now._

_I press my mouth to your shoulder, and you taste like pine and woods and sunlight and fur—clean fur, not your usual, gross fur. Maybe you had a werewolf bath? I don’t know. But you taste nice in my mouth, so there’s that._

_You slip your hands out of mine and adjust my knees and I slip a bit (because there’s no way I’m more coordinated in fantasy than in reality, let’s be real here) and our hips are pressing together. And I can feel you, oh, god, though your jeans. You’re hard, hard for me,_

_I kind of grunt and you twist to keep that pressure up and I reach my hand down and upzip you and you nearly pop my jean-button trying to get to me and I wiggle my pants off my hips and help you yank yours down but being far from your skin is_

_too much so I don’t even get them past your knees and we push together again and you’re *there* and *for me* and I brace my hand above your shoulder and reach between us and sort of get both of us touching and yours hands on me are wild and gripping my ass_

_running up and down my shoulders and you’re moving under me like you can’t get away and can’t get enough and somewhere between the writhing and the moving we get a rhythm going and we’re pressing in towards each other and it’s a bit sweaty and all_

_kinds of slick and your mouth is open and you’re breathing so hard but your eyes, Derek, your eyes never leave mine Just, pure concentration and we’ve got the rhythm so I lean down to kiss you and you’re so close to me and your hand pressed me in tighter_

_and we’re pushing harder and I get my hand on your chest and start working in towards your nipple and your breath hitches and I get it between my fingers and you whine and moan and then you’re losing it between us and your eyes finally squeeze_

_closed and that look, that happy look with the bliss and the smiling and the safety and then I’m going and it’s like peaking off a roller-coaster, like a whirling firecracker inside of me and the world goes white and I can’t feel anything but my muscles contracting_

_and you under me and it’s *so good* and you feel safe and *home*._

_and then it’s a bit awkward, because I’m trapped with my pants around my knees and you’re still all flopping from sexy funtimes and it’s getting a bit chilly in my house and I sort of waddle off of you to get the obligatory teenaged-boy box’o’tissues and we clean up. And kiss. A lot._

_Eventually, we get our clothes on and straight and clean-ish and we go downstairs and eat fish crackers. And drink water. Because our hot lovin’ took calories and dehydration sucks._

_Can you get a sex hangover? Like, it’s got to include the same kind of chemical-kick as alcohol and leaves the same (if not greater) potential for dehydration, so maybe?_

_Anyway._

_So,_

_Um,_

_That’s my sex story. In case it helps in your mental reenactments, I came all over my pants and self at *home*._

_Because I’m a sap._

_mkay, text you laters,_

_bye…_

Derek’s heart was racing. While it had been a couple of beats past *home* for him, beats with his eyes closed and his phone crunching-tight in his hand, that had been. Good. It had been good. It gave him an idea of what Stiles had wanted, could want, would-if-they-could-get-this-right want, and it wasn’t as scary as he’d thought. Stiles didn’t think he’d had to run everything, didn’t seem to have any major fuck-ups or hang-ups, not that Derek had expected any but he’d worried.

He was at 5% battery and so he went to go sit in the Camaro to charge it up. Before he unbent from his crouch, he tapped in his first reply since he’d gone afk.

_Home is right, Stiles. You’re home._

_I’ll see you tomorrow,_

\--

> The Rules were as follows:
> 
> 1)   We can’t have sex until we’re both over 18.
> 
>   1. Sex is defined as: orgasming in each other’s company, together or alone.
>   2.  “in each other’s company” is defined as within Derek’s hearing distance.
>   3. Phone-calls count when either party gets off but texting does not.
> 

> 
> 2)   We have to tell other people we’re dating,
> 
>   1. That includes the pack,
>   2. That includes the Sherriff,
>   3. That does not include school administrators or enemies if revealing the relationship would put either or both parties at risk
>   4. Excessive PDA is not the correct way of informing people we’re dating,
> 

> 
> 3)   We have to leave our options open,
> 
>   1. That means we’re allowed to date other people,
>   2. That means we both need to have friends outside of the pack
> 

> 
> 4)   We have to talk.
> 
>   1. This can include talking about sex or concerns or werewolf drama or w/e
>   2. We don’t always have to talk *right now* but we need to talk.
> 


\--

Derek wrote this as an email, and left it open and unsent on Stiles’s computer.

 _I’m just going to say, this is fucking tough. It’s not like I **don’t**_ _think about it, because it do. But in a story, with plot and shit? Not likely._

_But, I’m going to try._

_Ok._

_Here goes._

_So, you wrote about some random time we were having sex. Like we’d been having if for a while and we’d worked out the kinks, uh, issues. Or not worked them out. Or whatever._

_Anyway._

_But I’m going to write about our first time, how I see that going. Because I want you to know what you’re getting into, with me, with us._

_And don’t roll your eyes._

_And don’t text me about this until you’ve read it all._

_And for God’s sake, close the door. You seriously can’t have the Sherriff walking in and reading your (much) older boyfriend’s custom-first-time-porn on your computer. Sunday night dinner would be **awful**._

_Ok: door closed? Phone away/out of reach/off?_

_So my first time wasn’t—you know what it was. It wasn’t great. I felt, used. Unwhole about it. And I never want you to feel the same way._

_So, ideally, we’d have sex for the first time a few days after your 18 th birthday, but I honestly can’t imagine you waiting that long. Fine, being real, **I** wouldn’t want to wait that long either._

_It’s the night after the party on your 18 th birthday. Even better, it’s midnight-oh-one, the minute you turned 18 in the eyes of the law. You knock on my door. You’re all in a fluster and shaking and so am I._

_Because I want this, want you. Don’t ever think I don’t. **Because I do**. All of this, waiting, stuff, is to protect both of us, not just you. I know you think it’s me being condescending and creepy but it’s really not. It’s about being a good boyfriend, when one of us has more power than the other we need to have Rules. To keep ourselves in check._

_Because, I’m not a good man. I’m not a good guy at all. I want to pull you inside by the collar of your ridiculous hoodie, strip you down, strip me down, then suck you until you can’t take it anymore and blow everything down my throat. I want to touch you **everywhere** and kiss you until you can’t breath. I want you naked on my floor, trembling for more and I want it yesterday._

_But that’s why we have Rules. Because that may not be what you want. You may want to put your mouth on me, you may like hands better than mouths, you may not like anal or not like doing stuff on the floor or against the wall or under the kitchen table, or over it. You may not like sex at all—I know you think you do for sure, but a lot of people find sex overwhelming and uncomfortable. We could be ok together if that was true too._

_So, my fantasy starts before that instant at 12:01am when you show up at my door, drenched in rain for some reason but I think that’s just my mind making this porn-y. It starts months before, with us **talking**._

_Talking about what you think about, what you like. Talking about what feels good, then when you try stuff on your own, talking about how that made you feel._

_I want you to feel **in control** of what we do and how we do it, though the sex itself may feel overwhelming, I want you to know what you’re in for._

_So it’s 12:01am and let’s pretend what you want is mutual blowjobs. Not at the same time, because a good blowjob takes a level of focus that is very difficult to attend to while getting a blowjob. So you show up and we kiss, and you’re insistent and press me back against the door, slamming it a bit as it shuts. You get your hand under my shirt at the small of my back, and just sort of hold on._

_Your legs are getting close to standing between mine, you’re so close. And the smells, I won’t share them in detail since I’m not sure it will translate, but you’ll smell like fire-roasted sex. Hot and crispy and juicy._

_I push us away from the door and you whimper a little, the distance it takes for our bodies to be apart too much for you. It’s too much for me too, but I want this on a bed, or at least a couch, so I walk you backwards until you bump on the edge of the couch._

_I press you down into it, laying you backwards until I’m straddling your hips, working my way down your neck. You bare your neck beautifully, and are giving off these smoky pheromones. It smells like heaven._

_I roll your shirt up your body, following every newly-naked inch with my tongue. You’re writhing and gripping my shoulders, but at some point you start talking your way through it. You’re talking about how much you love my mouth on your nipples and how you’d like more attention to your dick and how you can’t reach me when I’m hovering over you like this._

_The only time you shut up is when I slowly unzip your pants and pull them down and all the way off, when you just breath hard and stare, clearly willing yourself not to curl in. I don’t know where your body stuff comes from, because you’re the most beautiful man I know, but I don’t expect to have handled it by this point. There’s some awkwardness with your shoes and socks, because while we’ve talked this over, the logistics of socks are always complex. You object, loudly, to being the only pantsless individual involved and so we take a minute to get my shirt and pants and briefs off._

_Then you’re talking again, and you’re talking about me and how I look, and then you’re talking about the feeling of my skin on yours and trying to hitch your ankle behind my hip to pull us closer. But I’m not going to let that happen, because while grinding to orgasm can be great fun, I promised a virginity-negating blowjob and that’s what I’m going to deliver._

_I start with the head of your cock. I mouth around it and you’re practically **keening**. I let the feeling of you fill my entire mouth, just the scents and smells are overwhelming. Then I ease you in and back, until you’re bumping the back of my throat._

_The first time I nudge my mouth down to my fisted hand at your base, you grip your hands in my hair. You’re not guiding or holding me down, but you’re trying to get a grip, trying to ground yourself. I can hear you forcing your breath to even out, but the tension is building in you nonetheless._

_You’re pushing into my mouth, body arching under mine and I can’t close my eyes. Then you open yours and look down at me. I reach up to your arm, holding you as close as I can while swallowing you as deep as I can and then you gasp and jerk and are coming down my throat. Your voice is high and light, saying things about how good it feels, and how you can’t believe we waiting this long. After you finish shaking your way through it, your hand starts moving in my hair again, and you sort of pull me up your body to share a kiss._

_I sit on the couch next to you and then you climb on top of me, face staying pressed to my neck. Your hand strolls down my torso, tweaking a nipple and curving around my hip to pull me in tighter to you, and then you’re gripping me, and I lose it for a second, I’ve been waiting for so long and it feels so good. I come back and I’m thrusting into your hand while your other hand is on the back of my neck, and you’re whispering filthy things in my ear. But then you slow, though I am in no mood to do so, and sit up, getting my feet under me._

_You slide to the carpet on your knees and arrange my legs on either side of you. You dip your head down, and your mouth is hot and smooth and wet. I keep from pushing into your mouth, but your hands are busy, stroking down my arm, rolling my balls in your palm, gripping a fist at my base. You hum a bit the first time I rest a hand your shoulder and the sound vibrates down through my cock into my center. You lower your mouth down, slower and slowly, trying to see how much you can take. You can’t get far, but the look of triumph on your face to getting any distance down is pretty amazing._

_You go back down, but this time with a rhythm. I can feel it begin to build, and I tighten my hand on your shoulder. You nod, knowing that’s coming, and pull off, finishing me with your hand and me cuming on your chest._

_You rest for a bit while I breath through the aftermath with your head on my knee, before grinning up at me wickedly and asking when I would be ready to go again. Not for a bit, but soon I would reply, and pull you up to sit, naked and warm together, on the couch. After cleaning your chest off, because you’re all goojie._

_So, yeah, that’s it. That’s how I would imagine our first time together going. That was really long, I hope it was what you were looking for. It sounds like you’re about out of the shower, and while I know what you were doing in there, I expect you won’t be too much longer._

_I’m going to go back to reading up on that new herb Alan suggested for WB poisoning._

_-D_

Stiles texted Derek: _Yes to blowjobs and yes to talking. We should start that soon. It sounds *fun*._ And he thought about the fact that Derek thought he would have an apartment of his own in 2 years.

And plotted.

\--

The next time they had a few hours to themselves was a lazy midsummer Saturday. They started out with a run and then the intention to head into town to buy groceries for dinner, but they never made it past the back seat of Derek’s car.

Derek was huge and barely fit between the back of the passenger seat and the back seat when he lay crouched over Stiles. Stiles keened into his mouth when he pulled away, hips held marble-still, since dry humping was firmly out-of-bounds behavior. Derek sighed into his neck, then breathed in his aroused scent. Stiles tried to pull his breathing under control, but with each returning press of Derek’s chest to his, he lost bits of control.

Derek settled against him, knee slipping between his and hips coming into sudden and jolting alignment. Derek didn’t mention anything when Stiles adjusted, just held still and avoided rubbing back. Once his heart was a bit slower, Derek said into his shoulder,

“So, you mentioned that you would be interested in _talking_.” And there went Stiles’ breathing and pulse again and Derek had to think arctic thoughts to keep from breaking the Rules.

“Yeah, but I don’t know if this,” and he gestured to their intertwined bodies, “Is the best environment.”

Derek trailed a hand from the crown of Stiles’ head down the side of his arm and then back up to rest behind his neck.

“This close, I don’t think you’ll be able to hide anything, fake any interest or preference because you think it would be what I wanted,”

Stiles huffed and muttered into his neck, unimpressed.

“How about we start easy?” Derek began. “How do you like to be kissed?”

“Like this—” Stiles started, leaning up to demonstrate only to find his mouth being held away with a finger.

“Words.” Derek said, pressing him back. “We’re using our words.”

Stiles grumbled in submission and threw his head back, sighing.

“I don’t know,” he started. “I like the taste of your mouth when you’ve brushed your teeth and haven’t been eating any rabbits,” This close, he was completely unable to avoid the swatting hand.

“Sometimes I like it when your teeth push close enough to nearly cut my lip, other times I like it when you dip down, like I’m a drinking fountain and you don’t want to get too much at once but can’t keep away?”

He hid his face in Derek’s shoulder.

“If we’re going beyond basic mouth-to-mouth kissing, I like to have my pulse-point kissed.” His voice took on his excited lecturer mode, like some kind of supernatural professor-type.

“It might be the werewolf thing, since I read wolves only show their throats and bellies to those they trust and its can be both a submission thing and a proof-of-pack thing. And I don’t mind the submission thing, and I don’t run on all-fours so anytime I want physical touch I need to show someone my belly,” Stiles considered, then continued:

“Ok, I mean, I guess a particularly wolf-y individual could conspire to only have sex with their belly facing away from their partner, but that seems like missing the point of having sex as a human in the first place.”

“Getting back on track, I like it when I tip my head back and you suck into my throat, especially when you growl, because it feels like I’m demonstrating to you that I like your wolf-parts and that’s important to me.”

Derek’s arms had tightened around Stiles at this last part, but he paused, breath in-control, saying:

“I notice when you’re doing that and its good. For me. That you are ok with that. But for the purpose of this discussion, you’re focusing a lot on me. I want to tell me what _you_ like independent of me.”

Stiles huffed and buried his head in Derek’s broad shoulder. He mumbled:

“What do you want, a powerpoint presentation on my kissing likes and desires?”

Totally straight, Derek replied: “If that would help you organize your thoughts, then yes, prepare to present at 9am on Saturday.”

Stiles cracked up and dug his hands into Derek’s stomach, initiating a short-lived-but-hard-fought tickle war.

He lost.

\--

8:45am: Stiles was setting up a projector in his economics classroom and fighting a staple. He’d “borrowed” the keys from coach during Friday afternoon practice and planned to return them Monday morning with hopefully no one the wiser. He’d also stapled the post-presentation quiz to the back of the slide-deck, but immediately after doing so he decided he wanted to hand that to Derek separately. So he was trying to remove the quiz without ruining the slide-deck’s staple job, and he was failing. He’d just pried the first up when the door creaked open.

Stiles startled, eyes sweeping in horror to the incriminating title slide (“10 Things Stiles Wants in a Kiss”) with its background picture of him making a duck-face and lived a world of embarrassment in the 3 seconds it took for him to recognize it was Derek at the door. An entirely different rush of emotion started somewhere on his hips and rushed up his arms as he flew at the door, slamming it closed in Derek’s startled face.

“Not ready!” he enunciated through the small cross-hatched glass window in the door. “Come back in 15!”

Derek gave him surprised eyebrows, disappointed eyebrows, and resigned eyebrows before turning around. Stiles thought he was going to walk away, but instead he leaned against the door and slide down until he was sitting on the floor.

In a normal voice he said: “You know I can hear your heartbeat, and it’s not like you’re hiding your nerves for 15 more minutes. What are you even doing?”  
  
“Trying to remove a staple,” Stiles muttered at Derek and returned to the paper on the desk. He tried gripping the quiz in one hand, the deck in the other and ripping them apart—only to have the quiz rip right down the middle.

Eyes staring, Stiles looked from hand to hand. He looked around the room frantically, but all hope of reprinting the quiz was lost. His eyes caught a piece of paper in the recycling bin and he quickly scribbled the multiple choice questions down. But just as he was about to copy-out the essay question (“Describe, in a minimum of 300 words, the general themes Stiles covered, particularly as regards to communication and experimentation”) he stopped. He thought about Derek’s super hearing, though about his excuse for keeping him locked out for 15 minutes, and wrote a new question.

15 minutes later, on the dot, he opened the door, looking down and hoping to see Derek spilled clumsily over his feet. Instead he saw Derek’s feet, and as he looked up, his satisfied smirk.

Stiles waved him in, directing him to the desk-chair in the middle of the room, with a printed version of the powerpoint, ready for notes.

Derek raised his eyebrows but sat, settling in with his legs stretched out. Stiles plucked a pen from coach’s desk and slapped it in front of Derek, looking at the notes fields pointedly.

“You have notes in front of you, so don’t feel the need to copy everything I say down verbatim, but there will be a quiz later.”

“Oh, will there?” Derek said, smirk hiding in the corner of his mouth. “Will it be a practical or theoretical exam?”

“Written, multiple-choice with a 300 words essay.” Stiles replied, primly. “Now, if you’re ready?”

  
 

 

Derek watched in perfect silence, and if Stiles had not been well-versed in Derek, he would have thought him unimpacted by the presentation.

But Stiles knew what each shift, each flick of his eyes to the side, each clench-and-unclench of his hands meant.

Derek was turned on.

Really, really turned on.

Stiles felt like crowing.

At the end, he put up his “Questions?” slide and hitched a hip against coach’s desk, letting his listener adjust himself in his pants, eyebrows raised. When Derek said nothing, and continued to stare at him and breath “normally,” he reached behind himself, pulled out the short printed quiz, and settled it on his desk.

“You have 15 minutes to complete the quiz,” he said. “Anything less than a 100% will require remedial instruction.”

Derek huffed in a low voice and said: “Is that supposed to be a punishment?”

Stiles shook his head as he walked out the door. “The follow-up lecture is even better, but only available to students who ace the test.”

Derek was all-the-way turned around in his seat: “And this follow-up lecture’s topic would be?”

Stiles braced himself against the doorframe, knowing his erection would be obvious through his pants (and to Derek’s nose) and not caring. “The Art of Stiles-Focused Handjobs.”

Derek huffed another breath before turning back to his paper and Stiles turned quickly, before the look of _want_ in his eyes could lead them closer than they could go.

Stiles walked normally for a few steps before rushing down the hallway and into the men’s bathroom. He hustled to a stall—there wasn’t supposed to be anyone here but jacking off in the middle of the bathroom _would_ bring anyone in the building to this floor and this bathroom and to this stall as per Stiles luck—and jerked his pants down. He thought through the rules, decided there was no way Derek could be doing this right now or hear him touching himself, and none of the others applied, so he went to town.

He started gripping himself tight around his base, pulling lightly while trying to bring his breathing down a few notches so he wouldn’t pass out, and be found by Derek or someone more mortifying with his pants around his ankles and his hand on his dick. The thought of the first time Derek seeing him pantsless being while he was unconscious brought his heart rate under control quickly. He spit into his hand and began to rub over himself, cresting over his head and then back to his base.

He thought about Derek; there was nothing in the rules to deny him that. He imagined him standing behind him, gripping him after backing him into a stall and spinning him around. He imagined the feel of his mouthing over his neck, sucking a necklace of hickies onto his spine. He imagined his weight behind him, close enough he could lean back just a bit and rest on him, rely on him to keep him standing, even if his knees got weak.

He imagined his left hand, sweeping up under his shirt and tweaking a nipple, rubbing and pressing before curving around and holding him in, close and tight. He thought about Derek’s fingers tracing patterns over his skin as he worked him with his hand, contrasting delicate brushes with tight-squeezes of his fist.

He imagined Derek’s hardness pressing into his ass, the knowledge of it, the _promise_. He wasn’t sure how he felt about anal, but he appreciated the idea of making Derek hard and then _doing_ something about it. Or at least having the power to do something about it, a power which he currently lacked. But back to the fantasy: he imagined Derek holding onto him, hunching over him, breathing in his ear.

“You’re going to come for me, you’re going to, I know it,” he would murmur, just shy of an order, just enough to keep Stiles interested without awakening his contrary streak.

“You like the feeling of me around you, Stiles? You like it when I do this,” and Stiles rolled his balls in his palm, fingers tracing back a bit and then coming back forwards. “You want me to do more of that,” Stiles whimpered and moved the hand he’d been bracing above the toilet down to his groin, sagging against one of the walls, breath and hand quickening.

“You’re going to feel so good, letting go, writhing in my arms, totally out of control,” Stiles hitched a gasp and then swallowed the small sound he’d been about to let out into the world.

“You’ll come in my arms, and you’ll _love_ it,” fantasy-Derek growled and Stiles could feel a hint of growing hair from Derek’s cheek, brushing him with its sudden roughness, and he was lost, coming over his hand and the toilet seat and a bit of the floor.

He kept breathing through it, rubbing his hand up and down himself until he had wrung the last fission of pleasure from his cock. He made a face at his mess, and got started cleaning up.

Once his hands were clean, he checked his phone: Derek still had 7 minutes on his quiz. Stiles camped outside of the bathroom door, playing geoDefense on his phone.

\--

**Multiple Choice and Essay on**

**“10 Things Stiles Wants in a Kiss”**

_**Time limit: 15 minutes** _

__

**Multiple Choice**

1\. All of these are places Stiles wants to be kissed EXCEPT:

 

> a. Jugular  
>  b. Middle of my back  
>  c. Knee  
>  d. Palm  
>  e. Hip

2.  Circle all that apply. Which attributes of yours do I like?

 

> a. Your scratchy beard  
>  b. Your big puppy-paws  
>  c. Your total lack of shame about those tiny noises you make  
>  d. Your taste  
>  e. Your smell

3.  In which of the following locations have we **not** made out thus far:

 

> a. My bed  
>  b. Back of your car  
>  c. Back of my car  
>  d. In Deaton’s office  
>  e. In front of the pack

4\. Which one of these was NOT listed as an acceptable place for your hands during a kiss:

 

> a. Gripping the back of my neck  
>  b. Holding the side of my face  
>  c. Around my wrists  
>  d. Clinging to my shoulders  
>  e. Cupping my waist

5\. Consumption of which one of these foods will fuck up a kiss?

 

> a. Watermelon gum  
>  b. Garlic  
>  c. Onions  
>  d. Coke Zero  
>  e. Pizza

**Essay:**

How do you remove a staple? (Minimum word count: 300 words)

Derek flew through the multiple choice questions then paused over the essay, a grin sliding across his face. Crossing his legs to further attempt to quell his response to Stiles’ presentation, he smirked and started writing:

 

> _Let’s assume you are well-stocked and well-prepared. You’ve got a staple in clean, white piece of paper (not to discriminate—a black piece of paper or brown or yellow will do) and you’ve got a staple remover._
> 
> _Flip the page onto its back. Maybe you turn it with two hands—be sure there’s no coffee-rings or croissant flakes or freshly-corrected-drafts-with-blood-red-ink-still-drying—or maybe you’ve perfected the slightly lewd one-handed wrist-flick. It’s on its face, bellow down, two bumps of the staple in the back._
> 
> _Let’s also assume you were moderate, and stapled a piece of paper or a stack of paper the right size and thickness of your stapler, so you have two, gently-curved back-hooks present and available. They aren’t mashed together, ends touching and overlapping, and aren’t stuck, legs out and prostrate and stiff-like-a-dead-dog._
> 
> _You did well and stapled it well, but for some reason, you didn’t do it perfectly. You need to remove the staple._
> 
> _Now take your staple remover, child-scaringly-sharp pincers controlled thoroughly between your parallel thumb and forefinger, and let its spring throw it all the way open.  Point the gaping mouth down, straight at those gentle humps of thin metal. Lower it, lower it until the very peaks, all four of those slippery-sharp points are hooked under those loops. Then snap it closed._
> 
> _In this last step you must be entirely decisive. The spring will try to push the staple remover’s mouth open, the staple will try to keeps its arms closed, keep them down, keep them in the 90-degree-different position they’ve already suffered being bent to._
> 
> _Think of it like this: in the stapler’s womb, all staples have their limbs at a 90-degree angle to their bodies. When you remove a staple, because it has failed in or is no longer needed, you’re merely returning it to its natal shape._
> 
> _With the two arms up, sharp and outstretched, flip the paper face-up, being careful not to scratch your desk with the newly-freed and sharp in their freedom staple limps. With your fingers, gently pinch the staple’s body and pull it out of the page. You should be left with your clean paper with no visible creases, and only two fairy-vampire-sized holes._
> 
> _And one, wrecked and unusable, staple._

He set down his pen, just as he heard Stiles go over the peak in the bathroom. He leaned back at his desk, and resolved to keep his own hands above his desk for the remaining time allotted to him. He didn’t quite succeed.

First, his left hand crept around his own waist, but he was holding himself together, so it was ok. Then his right hand tucked itself between his legs. This was less ok, but Stiles was done, and not coming back for—5 minutes now—so a little bit of rubbing wouldn’t break the Rules.

He eased his legs apart and felt himself shift in his briefs. He pressed a palm down on himself, cherishing the aching twinge he got at the contact. He shifted his hips up, pressing his heels into the floor and _arching_ into the feeling. He felt the ghosts of all of the kisses Stiles had mentioned, could imagine so clearly what his back, his wrist, his palm would _taste_ like. He could feel the wrap of Stiles’ legs around him as he rocked into him, pressing kiss down on that heaving chest.

He could so closely imagine what it would be like to wreck Stiles, pull his legs open and just press into him. He could see how his mouth would gape open, how his eyes would sparkle at the feeling. He’d love it. And Derek knew he’d wait to give it to him, to have that with him, but as he touched himself, he wished time could hurry a bit faster.

\--

Stiles returned at exactly 15 minutes and nearly choked reading Derek’s staple/remover non-con (“That is the most sexually violent thing I think I’ve ever read; what the _fuck,_ dude.”). He circled all of the correct answers (4/5) and slapped the quiz face-down on the desk upon which he was perched. He regarded Derek, and the feeling of arousal in the air. He moved over to him, loving how Derek’s eyes couldn’t tug themselves away from the sway of his hips. He walked up close, legs on either side of Derek’s outstretched leg, and then lowered himself down onto his lap.

“So,” Stiles said lazily, “Want to practice for the retest? You got the answer on number one wrong,”

Derek wrapped his arms around Stiles’ waist and pulled him in as tight as he could:

“I didn’t. We just haven’t tried knees and I wasn’t willing to concede that point.” He tucked his face into the side of Stiles’ neck: “I think I may need some empirical evidence,” he said as he trailed a hand down Stiles’ back and over his hip, following the seam in his jeans’ legs until he paused at his knee.

Stiles took in a strong breath, “Well, I think I can block some time in for that.”


	2. Covalent Bondage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The backstory to Stiles and Derek's romance.

**Covalent Bondage**

Derek hadn’t wanted to start this. He’d objected when Stiles first brought it up in a sideways, awkward way at the end of a pack meeting.

“So,” Stiles started, eyes drifting after Scott and Isaac as they shuffled out of the burnt-out front room. “What’re you doing this weekend?”

Derek stared at him, trying to figure out what he was looking for. He thought of a _Pinky and the Brain_ reference but rejected it as too silly to say to a 16-year-old pack-member. He must have been trying to work out Stiles’ reason for asking for too long because the teen continued,

“Because if you aren’t doing anything, Scott and Allison and I are thinking of going to see that Marvel flick and—”

“I am not spending social time with an Argent.” Derek said flatly. He got it now: this was another of Stiles’ attempts to paper over the molding cracks in his social circle with typical-teen-outings.

Stiles nodded, a little too quickly, “Yeah, I could see how that would be a thing. We could go together. You and I. Not Scott or Allison at all.”

Derek quirked his head; this didn’t fit into the plan he had deduced Stiles was working on. He tried to work is backwards again—why go to the movies?

“Which Marvel movie?” He asked, stalling for time.

“The one with men with the legs in the spandex? I don’t know. You know me, I’m a sucker for men in spandex.” Stiles threw him a look he probably thought was a leer, hitching his entire body in Derek’s direction before righting himself and standing straight, heels to the door.

“I didn’t know that about you, no.” Derek said, still unsure what was happening. Stiles looked out of words and started backing towards the door more purposefully, throwing out—“Well, if you change your mind, there’s only one movie theater in town and I’ll be there third-wheeling at 7,” before positively running down the steps.

Derek had worked that conversation over in his mind three or four times during his evening run around the perimeter of the Reserve, but could find no meaning.

The next time, Stiles hadn’t tried to use his words. Instead, in the middle of a stake-out of an abandoned house which may or may not be the working base of a pair of hunters working their way through town, he brought date food. Or what Stiles thought of as date food. He brought angel- hair spaghetti and pesto sauce in tupperware, a baguette and little wrapped butters Derek knew tell he’d stolen.

Derek ate the food in silence, while Stiles made _Lady and the Tramp_ jokes about Derek’s eating style. Things had been blessedly quiet for a while, but then, out of nowhere, he’d started telling Derek a story about how his mother and father had always negotiated garlic-eating over the dinner table.

“Are we eating garlic tonight, my dear?” His father would say, leaning in for a kiss cautiously.

“Of course,” his mother would say, kissing him quickly before pressing and dicing a whole clove into the marinara sauce. Stiles remembered how the smell of garlic would stick to his fingernails for days after he helped chop it.

Derek had stayed quiet while he talked, could hear how private this story was and how much it meant to Stiles. He seemed to have so few memories of his mother and Derek knew what it meant to expose rare memories to the reactions of strangers. He wanted to share something of his own, pass a piece of himself back across the empty space in the car, but just then a flashlight flicked on in the upper-story of the “abandoned” house and Derek had had to creep around to the side to catch a better look.

Driving Stiles back to his father’s place a few minutes before dawn, Derek slowed as they reached his block, stopping a few houses up. Stiles looked at him sideways and then huffed, stuffing plastic containers into his cavernous backpack and pushing on the door to find the handle. He had just got it to catch when Derek’s hand caught him by the elbow and he said:

“My mother liked to cook. She would never have negotiated food types with my father, though.” Stiles froze, like Derek had dropped fang, wide brown eyes raising to his. They breathed in the closed car for moments, before Stiles nodded, breaking contact and saying:

“Ok,” before sliding out of the car and hustling to the tree outside his own window, to sneak back in. Derek sat in his car, trying to work through why he told Stiles that. And why his hand was still tingling.

\--

He’d caught Stiles watching him a few more times, eyes always glancing away when he tried to meet them. With hindsight, he could now sort which ones had been friendship-courtship and which had been other courtship, but at the time they’d all been baffling.

There was the shoulder-touching, which Derek now knew was just part of the standard Stiles treatment for friends and acquaintances. He patted. He tapped. He slapped. His stroked and pinched and punched and rubbed. He showed ownership over the shoulders of anyone in his social circle.

But there was also the hand-holding. Not in the romantic-in-the-park theme, but he’d grab 2 of Derek’s fingers to lead him over to look at a particular book in Deaton’s office library, or snag his thumb to keep him from grabbing one of his files while they worked together in his room. He’d even interlaced their fingers, palm-to-palm, as they sat on the couch during a pack meeting, when he’d deemed Derek’s hand-motions “too pointy” and said he was on “hand-time-out.” Derek had extracted his hand and shoved Stiles off the couch.

Stiles had settled for keeping his foot captive after that, and yowled when Derek tried to take it away.

Finally, Derek got hit by the clue-truck.

It was after a particularly rough hunt, where Stiles and Scott had dragged Derek back to his burnt-out living room and laid him on that one couch together. Scott had kept first watch while Stiles put in face-time at home, but then he came back well before his Derek-watching shift came on and relieved Scott. Scott had given him a look and then packed out.

Stiles had worked his way up. He’d started with the pacing, then forcing Derek to drink more water than he wanted to, and then back to the pacing.

Eventually, he started talking:

“You can’t keep doing this. It’s going to get you killed, and then where will we be? Hmm? Alpha-less and leaderless? But that’s not even it, because we’ve been alpha-less before. _I_ don’t want you dead. _You_ shouldn’t be trying to get dead so often. I don’t get it. We would have gotten her back in the crypt without you jumping from the roof and nearly cracking your skull. I just needed a little time.”

Derek had been letting this flood of words wash over him as he concentrated on stitching his broken leg back together. But that this last part he huffed in his amusement.

“I _would_ have gotten it, I’ll have you know.” Stiles was standing over him, fists on his hips. He looked a lot taller from this angle, Derek reflected staring up from his back.

One of Stiles’ hands dropped down to hover over Derek’s face and he closed his eyes, waiting for—something. But he could feel the downward momentum ease, and hear when Stiles shoved his hand back into his own pocket. Derek tilted his head away, seeking the darkness of the couch back.

The _whoosh_ as Stiles fell to his knees beside the couch was unexpected, however. He put both hands on Derek’s uninjured arm and _squeezed_. “You need to listen to me.”

“I can’t lose you too. You, you’re,” he kept pausing, not getting the right words out.

Not making eye contact, Derek said to the ceiling: “Scott would be able to handle it, if I was, gone.”

Stiles’ sudden grip would have been painful for anyone human:

“ _It wouldn’t be the same._ I don’t feel the same way about Scott as I do about you.”  
  
And it wasn’t a declaration, and it wasn’t immediately clear, but it clicked for Derek: Stiles was treating him as separate from the pack, a separate project or relationship or—something.

Derek turned towards him, pain in his leg subsiding as he focused on the conversation.

“And what is it that you feel?”

Stiles flushed and then paled, seating himself back on his heels, though he stayed kneeling.

“I, uh,” his eyes flicked up and down Derek’s body and Derek wished he had a blanket.

“Stiles,” he started, as gently as he could, “I wouldn’t be able to, with you, if that’s what—“

Stiles was shaking his head, “No, no, no,” he started and Derek was preparing to take him at his lying word, let him save face and back out of it.

But then he stopped shaking his head.

His hands dropped into his lap.

His face rose, cocked to the side:

“Why not?”

Derek’s mind shuffled through the options, including “Kate,” “The Sherriff,” “Jail,” and “I’m not fit for human or were companionship,” and said outloud:

“Because it wouldn’t work.”

Stiles harrumphed and got to his feet.

“I think that’s up for debate, but not tonight.” Derek was catching a bit of whiplash from Stiles’ newly neutral tone, but decided to go with it.

“Do you need any more water? Because I’m going to catch some Zs over here if that’s ok.”

Derek shook his head and Stiles stripped off his jacket, pillowed it under his head on the floor beside the wall, curled up and promptly fell asleep.

Derek spent the night fleshing out his objections and watching the inexorable rise-and-fall of Stiles’ chest beneath his thin graphic-T.

He must have dropped off somewhere during the night, because when he awoke Stiles was sitting with his back to the couch, head in front of his face, working his way through a level of geoDefense. Derek suspected it was the same level he’d been working on a week ago—Stiles tended to fixate on a problem until it resolved itself under the crush of his will. Derek tried to sit up, discovered his muscles were not prepared for this effort quite this soon after waking up, and slumped back. Stiles lifted a glass of clear water up to him, without breaking contact with the game.

“Thanks,” Derek said, guiltily. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, or have his own weakness compromise Stiles’, albeit summer, sleep schedule.

“No problem. How’re your life-threatening wounds?” Stiles asked lightly. Derek stretched his legs, pointing his toes, and arched his arms over his head. He felt Stiles’ gaze follow his shirt up to the bottom of his ribs and tugged it back down. Stiles’ eyes were averted when he glanced over to check, but his heart-rate was elevated.

“You know, I’m not really into the ‘older guy’ thing,” Stiles started, stepping mid-stream into the previous night’s conversation. “I’m not about to be anyone’s guilty secret or touch someone who feels like a monster for touching me back. I’m not about that life. And it’s not about how you look, because while that’s a plus, there’s prettier guys bagging groceries at Lucky’s.”

Derek was frozen still, beyond grateful Stiles couldn’t hear his heart slamming cold blood down his veins.

“And it’s not the alpha thing, since power-kink doesn’t do it for me.” Stiles turned so he was looking Derek in the eyes. “This thing I have for you, it started with the way you treat Scott. You keep trying to protect him, protect all of us, even when it is the last thing you’re good at and in the last place you want to be.”

Stiles grinned with one side of his face, “Now, loyalty-kink, I’m all about that.” Derek could smell him, the charcoal of the house in his hair, the sweat from last night’s fight on his clothes, his sleep-breath. He was close—too close. Derek sat up slowly, pulling his legs up and placing them beside Stiles without brushing his shoulder or his hair or his crossed-legs. He settled his hands in his lap, interlacing his fingers, and bowed his head.

“And if you’re not into it, you’ll be strike 13 on my on-going journey of sexual expression and rejection. And I’ll be around, just probably not as much.” He nudged Derek’s knee with his forehead.

“You’re stuck with me as long as you treat Scott like pack.” Then he scooted back so he wasn’t so tightly in Derek’s space and dropped his eyes to the phone in his lap, seemingly content to wait out Derek’s reply.

Derek knew Stiles had never been content to wait in his life, and saw the careful-study of A Teen in Patience for what it was. But he appreciated the attempt to let him breath through it. He opened his mouth to breath and words came out:

“I don’t think I could, there was something that happened to me when I was around your age and I can’t be in a situation like that, on either side of the line.” Stiles neck bent like his head had just gained 12 pounds, but he kept his eyes resolutely downwards. “It just wouldn’t feel right.”

Stiles flipped his knee up, somewhere between getting ready to get up and go and hiding in a ball. The back of his neck was smooth and his shoulders looked tense under his soft-and-over-washing t-shirt. Derek’s heart plummeted into his stomach. He kept talking.

“I just can’t see how it would work, would you wait? Would I—”

“Yes.” Stiles told his phone and Derek paused, air tight.

“Would waiting for me take away something of your time in high school? Would you tell your Father? What would be—“

“The rules?” Stiles asked, eyes lifting to meet Derek’s. He rolled forward onto his knees, closer but not within touching distance of the still wolf.

“We could have rules, things we agreed to do, not to do. We could follow them. There isn’t one way to do this, it doesn’t have to be taboo and hurtful and weird and secret. We can just do it better, if we want.”

Stiles head fell, and he took a deep breath, deep enough it should have hurt with all of the tension in his back.

“But that’s 2 or 6 steps ahead. First, you need decide for yourself if you want that with anyone, much less with me. You’re not required to partner up, unless there’s a were thing I don’t know. And you’re sure as shit not required to pair-up with a guy-shaped-person. I mean,” and he ducked his head under his hand, rubbing it back and forth, “I don’t know if you _like_ me, if you not reciprocating is you holding yourself back or you’re genuinely not interested.”

Derek had something he wanted to blurt out, something he could say to plug that gaping faucet of self-doubt he saw unscrewing in the back of Stiles’ mind. He saw it in the rubbing of his hand, in the tightness of his shoulders. But it would be a _declaration_ and he couldn’t do that, not at this part in the conversation.

Instead, he said: “What if I didn’t?”

Stiles eyes shuttered, but he kept eye-contact, hand stilled on the back of his neck, and said: “Same if we didn’t want to try for any other reason. I’ll be around as long as you treat Scott like pack, just a little less often.”

Derek’s entire chest clenched at the still tautness with which Stiles said this, the formality of his tone. He stood and Stiles eyes came up from under his lids to track him, but he stayed seated. Derek walked past him towards the door, hand drifting down to brush the back of the hand on his neck:

“I need to think, just give me a couple of days, ok?” And he felt Stiles’ head nod. Then he was walking out the front door, then running into the trees where he could lose himself and some of this confusion that was steaming-up his worldview.

Stiles bowed his entire body as Derek walked out, but there was the slighted flutter of hope in his stomach. He hadn’t expected even that much, and he grinned before falling over on his side to continue his game.

\--

The next time Derek and Stiles saw each other, Stiles was shopping at the Lucky’s with his Dad. Derek was buying new medical supplies and carrying a 24-case of water on his shoulder. Stiles caught sight of him from the far end of the Ethnic Food aisle and had a brief flash where he wondered whether he should get his Dad into another aisle to avoid an incident. But then he straighten up, made eye-contact with his Dad and yelled:  
  
“Hey, Derek, how’s it going?”  
  
His Dad straightened, stiffened, and nearly gestured to his gun before taking in his son’s relaxed body and challenging face. He turned to face Derek, who was now walking between the tortillas and dry-pho, eyebrows questioning Stiles.

His Dad muttered, “Stiles, why are you talking to Derek Hale like he’s your friend?”

“Because he’s my friend?” Stiles said out of the side of his mouth. Eyebrows-of-serious-questioning were directing his way.

“Seriously Dad, we met running in the Preserve and I thought he was going to kill me, and he didn’t, and that continued for a while, and eventually we started talking during stretch-outs and he comes and helps Scott and I practice on the weekends sometimes. He’s ok.”  
  
Derek was now upon them and Stiles had time only for a quick glance to see how his Dad was taking it. The eyebrows were still serious, but his hand wasn’t on his weapon, so things were going better than expected.

“Derek.” His father started, hand not reaching out in friendship.

“Sherriff Stilinski.” Derek replied.

Stiles jumped in before this could sound more like a spaghetti western: “Hey, you up for a run on Saturday? I want to get started before it gets hot, say, 9am, the usual place?”  
  
“Sure,” Derek said, catching the thread gamely. “Make sure to bring water this time, I’m not going to spot you forever.” Stiles shook his head and bro-punched him on the arm.

“You know you’d keep bringing an extra.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

More dead silence. “Hey Dad,” Stiles tried, going for broke, “Want to come? I’ll cook hamburgers afterwards.”

“Maybe some other time,” his Dad said, eyes never leaving Derek’s.

“The Preserve is really lovely on some of the 5k trails,” Derek started in and Stiles turned shocked eyes to him for volunteering information, “I saw a heard of deer a few weeks ago and the spring bulbs should start be cresting by this weekend.”

Stiles’ Dad nodded, and Derek nodded, and said: “Stiles, see you then. If you’re late again, you get to sprint to catch up.” And walked back to his underused cart.

\--

Stiles’s Dad was silent the entire trip home and Stiles let the radio speak for him: light-pop, all Billboard 100 stuff, everything happy-and-teenager-ish and nothing suggesting illicit-May-December-relationships. Though it wasn’t really May-December. More like May-August. He texted Derek from beside his leg, where his Dad couldn’t see the glow of the screen:

_Good job faking back there._

_I wasn’t faking. You’re going to start running with me, and it’s going to be daily until you can keep pace. I am *not* running with your Father alone_

_lolz_ Stiles replied.

When the Sherriff pulled into the driveway and keyed off the engine he stopped, he let the silence tick-down. He started:

“Stiles, I’m not comfortable with you hanging out with Derek. He’s older and he’s been in trouble.”

Stiles took a deep breath and responded in a low voice:

“Dad, I’ve been in trouble too. Derek’s handling it, and I think being around normal,” at his Dad’s huff he corrected, “Ok, more normal people, it’s helping. He’s getting better, living in the world more.”

Stiles could feel his Dad’s eyes boring into him, and he continued, voice still soft:  
  
“He’s been helping Scott out, ok? He’s been going through some stuff, some stuff Derek knows about after what happened with his family. Scott’s been taking the murders around town really hard and Derek has some Olympic-quality grief-handling skills.”

He brought out his silver bullet, so-to-say: “He’s good to Scott.”

Stiles’ Dad’s entire demeanor changed then, face softening, shoulders relaxing down.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it’s not as dumb as your usuals, but keep it to daylight hours and groups of 2 or more, ok?”

“Sure, Dad,” Stiles said, and he would be worried at how easily the lies slipped through his teeth if the habit didn’t come from saving his father from many-clawed-death.

They got out of the car, and as Stiles walked around the back to get the cloth-bagged groceries, he glanced down at his phone in the palm of his hand:

 _I’ll be ready to talk tomorrow_.

\--

They’d started out with a slow build, running 5, walking 5. Stiles had tried not to talk, had tried to wait Derek out, but by the second set of jogging he’d started talking about his week. He talked about practice and Spring classes and how he wasn’t sure he’d ever get covalent bonds. Derek broke off the trail and into the woods, and Stiles slowed, trying to figure out if he was running away or going his own, special-wolf route, or what.

He watched him bend down and start running his hands through the old leaves, left over from the previous Fall. He came back with a softball-sized pinecone in each hand, gave Stiles a look for stopping, and kept running, picking a bunch of seeds off of each cone in silence until they both looked like damaged goods.

As the next alarm called them to a walk, he started talking, holding up the two pinecones in front of him.

“These are 2 molecules.” He shot Stiles a serious look when he cracked up, but kept going.

“The seeds are electrons and the core is the protons and neutrons.” He brought the two cones together so the holes left by the torn-out seeds were mostly filled with the seeds of the other cone.

“Molecules want to be stable, but sometimes they’re missing something. They don’t have enough electrons, so they keep looking for someone else, not someone who’s missing the same number as they are, but someone who has what they lack.”

Derek was watching the two pinecones in his hands, working them together.

“A covalent bond is when two molecules form a stronger, stable molecule by sharing electrons.” He let go of a pinecone, letting it hang, fully-attached, to the other one. It didn’t look like one pinecone, but all of the broken parts were attached to each other and it looked whole.

He looked at Stiles again, saying: “Makes sense?”

Stiles nodded, and Derek’s watch went off, and they started running.

“No more breaks, let’s run the rest of this out.” Derek said, and they did, Stiles thinking through his chemistry assignment and a few other things.

\--

They circled around and stopped back at their cars, parked next to each other in the same unused dirtlot at the entrance to the Preserve. Derek grabbed two bottles of water out of the passenger seat and leaned his hips against the Camero, waving the spare at Stiles. Stiles held up his own, Captain America-themed squeeze bottle and Derek nodded, tossing the extra through the open window. They both leaned against the sides of their cars, legs cross and arms folded.

Neither one was winded, but they were breathing deeper than when they’d started the run. Derek started in:  
  
“I said we would talk after the run.” And then he was silent, staring at the water bottle in his hands. The sap from the pinecones had left splotches on his palms and he was trying to rub it off.

“Yep.” Stiles said, and then went on, “I’d like to date you. I don’t know what you want, but I was thinking: dates. Running is a good one, so are the movies, evenings spent researching mystical happenings, cooking dinner since we’re both broke, watching movies on my laptop, maybe going to the beach for a weekend. I want to have some of your time.”  
  
He continued: “It’s not the physical stuff I’m after, though I wouldn’t turn it down. I’d like to hang out with you, and if we’re holding hands at the movies, sitting next to each other researching, eating off the same plate at dinner, making out watching movies on my computer or doing some naked beach frolicking, that would be fantastic.”

He took a deep breath. “I just don’t know what you want. I don’t know if you want to date me, would want to date me if I was legal, or if I wasn’t the Sherriff’s son or Scott’s friend. I don’t know if you want to date at all. But the above,” he waved his hands like his speech had been documented in a chat-log, “That’s what I want. Off the top of my head.”

Derek was looking at him, face considering.

“I do like you. And I protect Scott because he’s pack, but you’ve been pack since he was. You’re not accepted into my life on sufferance, you’re here because I want you to be.” He took a deep breath.

“I wouldn’t want you to leave it. I want you at pack meetings and by my side in fights and doing research that saves us more nights than not. There are other things I want, things I’ve wanted from you, or from a future-you who could consent and know all of the possible consequences.” He was looking at Stiles now, with concern in his face.

“You just gave your idea of a sort-of middle ground, a middle-school level of dating to hold ourselves to. It’s not good enough. It’s not what either of us want,” and he stepped towards Stiles, raising a hand and running the back of his fingers down the side of his face, close enough they were breathing the same air.

“And I want that too, the running and movies and research nights and dinner and cuddling and beach weekends—though not naked ones. I think we’d need to agree on some guidelines, some structures that can keep us to what’s legal and what’s right, even if things get hot and heavy.”

Stiles was having trouble breathing, gulping in air that was heavy with hope. It smelled like Derek after a run—salt and earth and musk, with the tinge of Spring in the air woven through it. He nodded, and the motion brought Derek’s hand into contact with his face again.

He said: “I think we could do that.” He paused and then figured he’d try. “Could we start with a hug? I feel like that’s a thing any version of The Rules could allow.”

Derek looked a little shocked and Stiles wondered when the last time he’d gotten a hug had been. Stiles let Derek make the first move, and he did, holding his arms akimbo with an awkward look on his face.

Stiles rushed in, wrapping his arms across Derek’s back and Derek by-inches-and-by-miles settled his over his shoulders. Stiles buried his face in Derek’s neck and got the beginning of beard-burn for his efforts. He eased his body in closer until their chests and then their stomachs were touching. He adjusted his body to the hug, moving into spaces as Derek relaxed and opened them up. Derek let one of his arms trail down Stiles’ back to settle into the sway of his spine and Stiles gasped at the contact.

They stayed that way, for a long time.


	3. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles helps Derek begin the build the life he wants.

It was late summer, and Stiles needed a project. He’d cruised PadMapper and Craigslist, he’d scanned through the back of the local paper, and he had a plot.

The one major thing Stiles got out of Derek’s analytical porn, other than orgasms, was that in 2 years Derek thought he would have an apartment with a couch, a door, and a carpet. This was news to Stiles, who had assumed he was doing fine doing his mountain man thing in the woods. But he was determined to see it happen.

\--

Derek was laying on his back reading in the middle of his burnt-out floor in the summer heat of the afternoon when he heard Stiles’ Jeep coming around the bend 3 miles out. It was different, trying to hear long distances in the city, when there were sounds and shapes of buildings that he’d never learnt to distort them. But out here he knew exactly what to listen for.

And he’d long gotten used to the sounds of Stiles’ arrival.

There was a squeak in the left brake that Derek was trying to avoid worrying about, and a slight grind when Stiles went around the curves.

And that wasn’t even getting into the _Civil Wars_ he was blasting out his open windows. Or the yodeling. Derek considered howling to add to the commotion, but grinned off that reaction: he preferred to keep his interactions with Stiles human when he could.

That was the sound of the Jeep making it up the last of the hill and crunching to a halt. Then Stiles bounding out, and coming to a stop at the front of the house. Derek sighed; Stiles always paused before approaching him.

He rolled himself to his feet and made his way outside, pausing to tuck a thread back into the disintegrating couch.

He propped the door open with his hip and stared out at the teenager, wondering what he’d gotten himself into, yet again. Stiles stood there, open-faced and with—was that a newspaper in his hands? The air was damp and chill and it was starting to wilt the pages, but it looked like the local Alt paper and it was reeking of marker.

“Come on out, Derek,” Stiles said. “We’re going apartment hunting.”

Derek cocked his head but made his way off his porch.

“Why?” He said, pulling up some barriers around his heart. He didn’t particularly want to hear Stiles call his home _creepy_ , or _morbid_ , or _awful_ , or what he’d called it once, voice soft and cracking, _too sad for you_.

Stiles paused, seeming to swallow a pithy response. He held his hand out, jiggling it when Derek took too long to reach back.

“Your story, man. The one you left open on my laptop?” Derek flushed at the memory—he’d been adjusting himself the entire run and had barely made it into the woods before he could take care of his fantasy-induced erection.

Stiles yanked him to the car and Derek let himself be dragged along. Stiles talked to his shoes, lower than a human could have heard but within easy range of Derek’s ears.

“We don’t have to wait for everything until I’m 18. You had an apartment with a couch and a rug and a door, in the story.”

He herded Derek into the passenger seat and tossed the unorderly newspaper into his lap. Derek started reassembling it and had seen Stiles had circled every cheap apartment on the edge of town he could find.

“We don’t have to do anything, we can just go and look, I mean I’ve called them and set up 3 appointments, but we could blow them off,” Stiles carried on, his hand on the key but the ignition left to wait.

Derek tried to catch his ground in the flood of words, along with the usual enveloping smells of being in Stiles’ home space.

“Stiles, I don’t have any money,” he started. Stiles ducked his head,

“Ok, yes, but you have some—I know you do, because you buy groceries and replacement clothes. You all could fund a thrift shop the way you go through jeans. And if you had a place to shower rather than, I don’t know, just swim in the river and shake your fur out, you could look for a job,”

Derek snorted, but Stiles kept on,

“I mean, I know pack business comes first, but a part-time gig? Something to keep you in beer and Skittles?”

Derek settled back in his seat, his head against the headrest, preparing for a fight.

But what came out of his mouth was: “Ok.”

“Ok?!” Stiles injected. “I mean, great, cool, let’s go,” and he rushed to turn the engine over, trying to get some movement going before Derek could change his mind.

Derek had no inclination to sign for an apartment today, but thinking about getting a warm place to sleep— _a place Stiles could sleep too_ his mind traitorously murmured—had been floating onto his todo list. And this wasn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon, when things weren’t actively falling apart.

They’d been driving for 10 of the 15 minutes it would take them to get to town, when quietly, seemingly out of the side of Stiles’ mouth, dropped the words:

“I would never ask you to give up the house.” Derek paused and stared, hand rising to lay on the back of Stiles’s neck. Stiles preened into it, but continued:

“I mean, it’s your home-place, I get that. But you can’t rebuild it while you’re living there and without more money to work with, so this could kind of be like moving out for the duration of construction. Maybe we could put up a tent or a hammock or something, or spend a week a month camping there or something, so the scent never wears out.” He snuck sly eyes over Derek’s direction.

“I know how lost you get in the urban wilderness,” and then quieter, “and I know what the land means to you.” Derek doubted he really knew, because there were things he hadn’t shared, _couldn’t_ share, but he could venture that he got a part of it.

Stiles shook his head: “So, no leaving the creepy mansion in the woods, _but_ , if you can have a homebase with, say, central air or at least radiant heat for better wolf-nesting, that would be good.”

Derek ducked his head to hide a smile. They parked outside the first appointment while he glanced through the listings. He asked Stiles which he’d booked for, and they were mostly ones he would have chosen. His hindbrain was repeating their earlier conversation on a loop when he hit a repeat-spot:

“Wait, you scheduled the appointments? Does that mean people around town know you’re looking for an apartment,” Stiles mumbled and shuffled in his seat. Derek’s hand slid down to grip his shoulder.

“Stiles, what did you tell your Dad?”

Stiles muttered into his chest while still keeping the tops of his eyes on the road. Derek could hear him, but since he wasn’t speaking English and was just mumbling it werewolf hearing didn’t do him much good.

“Again?”

“I told him I was helping you pick out an apartment.” Derek sighed and let his hand drop to Stiles’. He couldn’t imagine the Sherriff being ok with Stiles was _nesting_ with Derek. The Sherriff knew they were dating and Stiles wanted it to go further, but they were dating only in the most preteen of senses in at least the physical dimensions. They were following The Rules.

“And how’d that go?” He asked, voice flat.

“I mean, it wasn’t, he wanted to make sure it wasn’t a _couple_ thing, and I wouldn’t be cosigning the lease or anything, not that I can sign legal documents,” he added bitterly, “But he was, actually, you know, cool.” Derek’s head jerked up, staring the side of Stiles’ face into giving up more information.

“I think he wants you to be more stable, so if we do this the whole way you have an out. That I’m not, like, your only source of human contact.” Stiles continued, his face getting disturbed.

“He started going on about emotional resilience and pack and _skin hunger_ and wanting to make sure you were getting _touched_ by other people and I just started going _LALALALALALALALA_ until he stopped.”

Derek smoothed a hand down Stiles’ arm the Stiles catted into the affection before looking up at the janky building with pealing blue-grey paint. He paused, hand on the door. Derek nodded to an internal thought and said,  
  
“That’s actually good advice, for both of us. We shouldn’t be each other’s only sources of physical affection.” Stiles rolled his eyes and sighed, then when Derek came around the side of the Jeep tucked his hand into the back pocket of the werewolf’s jeans.

“Ok, or, we could just manly-cuddle all the time and we’d be set for life.” He nodded, confirming to himself. “Yep, I like that plan the best.”

\--

Derek didn’t like any of the apartments, but Stiles persevered and filed away each of his complaints. Fireplaces were a no, as were apartment blocks with no view of trees or dearth of opening-windows. Derek wouldn’t even walk into the bedroom of one with bars on the window and even Stiles could tell something was off with the English basement before Derek leaned down to his ear and said:  
  
“Former sex dungeon.”

Stiles nearly choked on his spit and Derek stood by, impassively with a grin tucked into his cheek while he recovered and made their way out.

They finished up with pizza, sitting side-by-side and holding hands between bites. While they were waiting for the check, Derek dropped his head on Stiles’ shoulder.

“The apartment hunting was a good idea.” Stiles startled and ran a finger up the side of Derek’s arm, tucking into him a little closer.

“I know it isn’t comfortable to think of changing—“ he started.

“Nothing’s going to be as uncomfortable as that floor.” Derek muttered into his shoulder. Stiles grinned and patted his arm.

“Well, you can always come and bunk with me,”

Derek huffed and shook his head slowly side-to-side: “I don’t think we could manage that.”

Stiles considered for a moment and nodded: “On further consideration, you in my bed plus a lack of sex, seems quite unlikely. We should probably wait.”

He paused, and then in a softer voice: “But, if there was a reason we needed to, we could though. If you just needed a place to be, someplace warm and dry, I’d keep my hands to myself or Dad would let you have the couch.”

Derek’s small smile was lost in the folds of Stiles’ shirt, but the warm feeling that welcome gave him lasted all the way home.

\--

Stiles returned the next day, this time with job listings circled and his laptop. He marched up the steps, sat on the porch with his back against the wall and started typing, waiting for Derek to come out and find him.

> **Derek Hale**  
>  415-555-9920  
> 2075 Addison Ave  
> Beacon Hills, CA  
> Beacon Hills High School Class of 2005  
> GPA: 3.7 (first 2 years—studies interrupted by family trauma)  
> Advanced Placement: Biology, English Literature, Latin  
> GED: 2006, New York City
> 
> **Professional Experience**
> 
> **Alpha** , Beacon Hills Pack, Beacon Hills, CA, September 2011 – Present
> 
>   * Successfully recruited 3 teenagers into becoming werewolves and secured the loyalty of another werewolf and his human friend
>   * Organized thrice-weekly trainings for new werewolves, improving fighting and survival skills considerably
>   * Protected mid-sized California town from a wide and violent range of supernatural and human monsters, including omnicidal hunters, a rival Alpha pack, and a kanima
> 

> 
> **?????** , ????? New York City, NY, 2003 – September 2011
> 
>   * What on earth did you do in New York? Did you bus tables? Act? Clean houses? Work the shipyard? Steal?
>   * Inquiring minds want to know.
> 

> 
> **JV Captain** , Basketball Team, Beacon Hills High School, Beacon Hills, CA, 2001 – 2003
> 
>   * Lead JV team to sectional finals, achieving a team record of 20 – 2.
>   * Won JV MVP freshman and sophomore years for mentoring and leadership on the JV team
> 

> 
> **JV Captain** , Soccer, Beacon Hills High School, Beacon Hills, CA, 2001 – 2003
> 
>   * Helped build soccer team through personal recruitment, leaving a legacy that won 3 sectional championships, including 1 a year after being forced to leave the school by family trauma
> 

> 
> **Member** , Junior Classical Society, Beacon Hills High School, Beacon Hills, CA, 2001 - 2002
> 
>   * Competed and placed in state Certamen competitions and scored in the top 15% of state language test-takers
>   * Helped coordinate regional classical language classes as a member of the JCL Conference Committee
> 

> 
> **Skills** :
> 
> Leadership, team-building, martial arts, wilderness skills, languages (Latin, Spanish), computer skills (Windows, OSX, Word Suite, basic graphic design).

\--

When Stiles came up for air, Derek was sitting beside him, his eyes wide.

“ _What_ are you _doing_?” He asked.

Stiles gestured to his computer screen: “You need a resume to get a job. I’m writing you a resume.”

“I see that, I got that part. _Where_ did you get my team records, and _how in God’s name did you find out about the Certamen_? I didn’t even want to do that, I swear to _God_ , Laura made me do it to keep her company.”

Stiles tapped his nose: “The wonders of the internet, my friend. And the fact that Beacon Hills never changed its admin password from “BeaconHillsRoxs!!” after Danny found it in middle school while digging for Jackson’s report card.

“Also, you were pretty good, so don’t be all shy.”

Stiles swung the scroll upwards until it bounced off of the top of the page, then stopped.

“Anything you want to add? The section on your experience in New York is pretty thin.”

Derek’s face paused and thinned and his shoulders came up.

Stiles back-peddled: “I mean, you don’t have to. We can just make something up, and I mean, I’m planning to be one of your professional references anyway, so there’s really no need—“

Derek took a deep breath: “Can I tell you later? I’m not in a place—I’d just rather talk about it another time.” Stiles nodded jerkily and popped his laptop closed.

“Look what I brought,” he said, dropping a file of folded-up newspaper into his lap. Like the apartment listings had been, he’d circled the likely options in red pen:

  * Mechanic
  * House painter
  * Administrative Assistant
  * Bouncer



Derek blanched and looked at Stiles.

“Do you really think I want to be an administrative assistant at—“ he checked again, to make sure he’d seen correctly the first time,”—at a _Dentist_ ’s office? Really, Stiles?”

“Not particularly, no. But I figured if I circled something totally ridiculous you would have to tell me what you _do_ want out of a job-for-money.”

Derek leaned back, dropping his head to rest on the wall of his porch: “That’s a good question.”

Stiles leaned over and tucked his head into Derek’s shoulder. “What did you want to be when you grew up?” he started.

Derek closed his eyes and sighed, clearly going back in his mind. “I wanted to help people, but also bring bad people to justice. I was all about the cops-and-robbers, so I guess I wanted to be a police officer.”

And in what felt like a cascading series of steps in Stiles mind, he could see the next 1.5 years: Derek going to academy, taking shit from his Dad, joining the force, helping keep wolf-y- and non-wolf-y-citizens alike safe in Beacon Hills. He would have his own money, his own apartment, his own social support network, his own relationship with Stiles’ Dad.

“Derek, I have a—“

Derek’s eyes had followed his and he said: “I’m there with you, but would you really want me spending that much time with your Dad?” Derek had seen the pieces come together in Stiles’ face and he thought working with the Sherriff might help solve a lot of problems.

“ _Yes_ ,” Stiles said. “You could protect him when thinks get unreal and he could protect you from the occasionally bloody consequences of your Alpha-life.” Stiles nodded, convinced.

“There are deputies who are dumber than rocks and slower than the mold that grows on them, and if you can keep your grr,” and he made a wolf-face with clawed hands while Derek snorted next to him, “in check, then you’ll have better emotional control than half the guys in the squadroom.”

“I’ll look into it, ok? But, for now,” he said, turning and tucking his head into the junction of Stiles’ neck and his shoulder, rubbing some beard-burn into the pale skin, “I think we should focus on other things.”

Stiles hummed his agreement and approval and turned into the affection. He climbed over Derek’s leg into his lap and tangled his hands in his hair. The kiss started off chaste and puckish and ended up _filthy_. His knees were digging into the pitted wood of the porch and he couldn’t get the kind of leverage he wanted. Derek just kept dragging his hands through his hair, not getting any further, not letting it get any deeper.

Stiles was making these tiny sounds into Derek’s mouth, including one that was nearly a whine when he pulled back.

“We should get going,” Derek said, breath coming hard. Stiles tried to refocus.

“Where, where are we going?”

“I figured we could try for a run, then maybe go and look at some more apartments?”

Stiles nodded, eyes wide: “Yeah, let’s do that. Maybe we can find some pinecones to decorate the mantle in your future home-place.”

\--

School started up again and Stiles had less time for all-day cuddle-sessions. Derek had squeezed into the fall class of the policy academy with no small amount of nepotism, but they had evenings and weekends and in-service days, and the full cooperation of Stiles’ Dad and they got in the time they needed.

There were mistakes. The time Stiles showed up drunk at Derek’s house and Derek had to lock him in the basement because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself (he woke up hung-over to 3 bottles of water and a note telling him Derek was on a run, but if he could behave he would bring back bagels). The time Derek half-came in his pants during a make-out session that he’d lost control over (Stiles had stopped and pulled back for them, and when Derek had turned embarrassed and red and started to flee hauled him into his lap until they could talk it through).

But they kept talking, and kept coming back, following The Rules, sharing energy, and building a home for each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I plan to and want to write the actual sex scene where they finally get to have sex, but I wanted your input. How do you think it should go? Is it more like Stiles' vision or Derek's? Inspiration please!


	4. 3 options for the birthday boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the night of Stiles' 17th birthday, Derek gives him 3 options for them to be together without breaking The Rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if this is a trigger, but better safe than sorry? Possessiveness, hickies, marking. All nice and consensual, no actual sex. Also, tickle wars. If that's your thing.

The night of Stiles’ 17th birthday, Derek and Stiles tested the limits of the Rules. They’d used the occasion to double-book a birthday party with a house christening party for Derek’s new apartment. They’d invited both sets-plus-parents of their social spheres and decked the space out with the most garish birthday decorations they could find on Amazon.

Derek’s present was an SAT study guide, inside of which were concert tickets bought with savings from his first 3 paychecks as the newest member of Beacon Hills’ finest. Stiles groaned at the book—study sessions for national standardized tests had eaten severely into their make-out time—and then grinned small and soft at the tickets.

The party was a whirl of people, singing and cake and congratulations and a few well-timed zingers about their still-less-than-fully-parentally-approved relationship. And then Allison dragged Scott out the door, though he’d been willing to go another round on the Wii, leaving Stiles and Derek with the sound of the dishwasher running and the smell of spent birthday candles.

Stiles had negotiated special sleep-over rights, after he’d confirmed with his Dad that, yes, Derek’s couch had a futon in it, and no, they wouldn’t be sharing a bed.

This was a bit of a blatant lie, but since Stiles’ Dad wanted to keep the peace and had a slow-but-grudging respect for Derek’s commitment to Stiles’ safety, he let it pass.

Derek dried the soapy-water off his hands and walked towards Stiles, sliding his palm up his arm then back down his side, to settle just under the hem of his shirt. He leaned in, whispering into his ear:

“Would you like to see your second present?”

Stiles stiffened and then grinned, smacking a wet kiss on Derek’s neck and tugging him towards the bedroom.

“Hmm, I wonder what it could be,” he murmured. “Could it be—sex?”

“No, it could _not_ be sex. 16-may-get-you-20, but 17-and-the-Sherriff’s-son-will-get-you-shot.”

“You’d heal.” Stiles huffed, not in disagreement but in shared frustration and opened the bedroom door to see:

 _Options_.

Stiles froze and stared down at the tightly-stretched maroon sheets. Derek’s bed was made (for once) and there was a severe lack of randomly-strewn clothing about the room. On the bare sheet lay 3, glaringly white, unlabeled envelopes.

“These are 3 different ways we can be with each other tonight that don’t violate The Rules.” Derek started. “If you don’t want to, if you’re tired, we could totally just hang out until you fall asleep.” The werewolf propped his hip against the door and looked at Stiles: “But I sort of doubt that’s the case.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and leaned over the bed, sweeping up the 3 envelopes and splaying them before his face.

“Well, however will I choose,” he said in an affected voice, fanning himself with the envelopes. Derek grinned and stalked closer to the bed, pulling up short so his knees just brushed the edge.

“You only get one tonight, though if you don’t like the first one you pull you can swap it out for another option.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows, _like there was any form of physical-with-Derek he wouldn’t be down for_ , and ripped open the top of the first envelope:

 _Hickies_.

Then, in Derek’s neat square handwriting:

_We’ll have to keep our pants on to avoid accidents, and be careful with how far we get, but I’d like to leave a line of marks down your body that you’ll be carrying for days._

Stiles’s eyes drifted closed. He could feel it in his head, Derek over him, pressing his mouth down, pressure hot-painful-sweet. But the physical piece wasn’t the part that had left him aching in his suddenly-tight-pants: it was the _marking_ part. The idea that these would make him _his_.

He waved the note in the air, saying: “I’m going to pick this one, but I want to know the others,”

“Hmm,” Derek says, wrapping arms around him from behind and pressing a kiss into his shoulder.

“Isn’t a bit of mystery worth the wait?” he asked and started applying a bit more pressure to Stiles’ shoulder.

“I live my life surrounded by werewolves, witches and wacky supernatural hijinks, I _loathe_ mystery. Mystery gets me eaten.”

Derek smiled, breaking the suction he was working on. “Alright then, keep reading, and I’ll just occupy myself,” and let his hands loose to roam around Stiles’ chest. He kept it above the shirt and went back to crafting his mark.

Stiles collapsed back into Derek’s hips a little, reveling in the pressure on his neck and the growing evidence at his hip of Derek’s attachment.

He closed his eyes to concentrate on leaning over to pick up the next envelope, but the movement pushed his ass into Derek’s hips and he shuddered at the increased contact.

“You’ve got to,” he gestured at Derek’s hands, now wending their way to his pecs, hoping the movement would encourage Derek to give him a little more leaning-space. It did no such thing, as Derek took the opportunity to snag his shirt-collar a little lower on his spine and then continued making out with his neck.

Stiles grabbed the second envelope and in a supreme exercise of will, managed to open it. The title was:

_Handcuffs_

Stiles made a noise that could not be called articulate and glowered as Derek chuckled into his neck.

 _Since we both know you can’t be trusted with your hands free, we’ll give you a little less to work with. There’s a new set in your drawer, get them out and loop them through the bedframe. Take off whatever clothes you want, and we’ll see how far we can get before you start begging to break The Rules_.

_OR_

_If you feel you can be trusted, we’ll tie me up. There are the regular cuffs in your drawer, but in the back, in a lock-box, there are a set that are a bit more, customized. The leather has pressed wolfsbane between the straps, so they’ll leave me human-weak and completely at your mercy._

_Happy Birthday_.

Stiles stilled at this last option and Derek pulled back a bit from his second mark, hands slowing on Stiles’ chest.

“You cool?”

Stiles turned in his arms and Derek let him, hands calming and on his hips, shelving the heat of the past few minutes.

“Would you, really, with me?” and Stiles pointed to the second option on the _Handcuffs_ card.

Derek ducked his head and nodded lightly.

“If that’s something you wanted, I think we could try it. And just so you know, my safeword would be ‘Finstock’.”

Stiles grinned and bumped his forehead into Derek’s, shuddering in mock-horror. “Well, that would shut everything right the hell down, wouldn’t it.” He considered, “I think mine would be—Sheriff.” Grinning at Derek’s blanch, he paused and pulled Derek into a hug. He whispered,

“Let’s keep with the hickey-making, but another time, yes, I’d like to try that, if you would be ok,”

Derek nodded:

“I trust you. I can’t promise I won’t freak the fuck out, but we could try.” Stiles could feel him smile against his cheek. He pulled back,

“And now I really can’t stand to wait to see the last one.”

“You can’t?” Derek murmured, kneeling smoothly and rutching his shirt up, gracing his mouth over Stiles’s hip. “Let’s see,” he said, flicking his tongue against the arc of his bare skin, “if you,” pressing a sharp kiss into the thinly-stretched skin, “can keep your focus long enough.”

Stiles groaned and his knees sunk for a moment, before he caught himself and insisted his mind narrow. He twisted around and caught up the very last envelope. It was heavier than the others, with something square and smooth inside it. On its back it read:

_One picture_

Derek’s hand came up to snatched the envelope back, lifting the bed from the boxspring and slipping it under, before letting it slap back down and the comforter pull back over it.

“That’s for later. The surprise is spoiled if you open that one.”  
  
Derek was now kneeling between him and the bed, face at a particularly intimate level. He kept perfect eye-contact while he leaned in and bit Stiles’ stomach. Stiles tried to hold back, but his groan turned into a giggle and he squirmed, wriggling and saying:

“Ticklish-ticklish-ticklish!”  
  
“Are you now?” Derek said, following him on his knees, hands coming up, poised to strike.

Thoroughly abusing his werewolf powers, he started in, tickling Stiles on his sides and under his arms, and as Stiles lost his breath and then his footing followed him down. Crowding over him, Stiles finally got his own arms up and tried to find a moment of vulnerability in his body. He found no reaction on his stomach, none under his arms, and in desperation he launched himself under Derek’s flailing arms and dug into the backs of his knees, anchored on the slipping rug.

Derek stiffened and writhed, huffing out a surprised breath. Stiles pushed his luck, digging one hand in while venturing the other one back a little farther to stroke a finger down Derek’s neglected foot. Derek _shrieked_ and toppled him over backwards.

“No.” He said. “No,” laughing his breath out, unable to keep a straight Alpha-face at all.

Stiles rearranged his legs so they were wrapped around Derek’s waist, tugging him in closer. Derek fell forward with a huff of air, catching himself inches above Stiles’ open face. He breathed him in for a moment and then lowered himself the last inches, brushing his open mouth down over Stiles’, letting his body settle into his easy curves, planes against planes, making space for each other.

“We’re going to get distracted if we stay like this,” he started, and Stiles nodded, even as he traced his fingers down the back of Derek’s head, tips finding the scalp.

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Stiles murmured, then closed his eyes and pulled himself back in, “But I believe I was promised a marking.”

Derek pressed one last kiss down, deep and searching, and Stiles arched up into him, pressing in ways he usually wouldn’t dare. Derek made a broken sound and was half-a-beat from breaking down, when Stiles raised his hand and pressed Derek’s shoulder, easing him back and down his body.

“I don’t want to have to stop too soon.”

Derek whispered into his shoulder something about spoiling fun, but eased himself onto his forearm, leaving the other the trail up and down Stiles’ side. He pressed his mouth back down and Stiles gasped, the tickle-war having given his skin the moments it needed to become sensitive again. Derek’s mouth just below his clavicle felt like a bite, and that was a thought that sent thrills and chills through his extremities.

Pressed under Derek’s body, he thought about what it would feel like to get bit, to get savaged by the man cradling his hip. About him losing control and just _taking_. He liked part of that thought, and was chilled by part. A particularly insistent pull of Derek’s mouth brought him back to the present and he began tracing his fingers up and down Derek’s back, grounding himself in his safe reality.

He started working his way down his chest, pulling a bruise to the surface just over his ribs as Stiles arched into him and tried unsuccessfully to keep his noises to himself. His hand crept up to Stiles’ chest, stroking and playing as he sucked a matching mark onto his side, and then another right below it. He kissed over the tender spots, and Stiles sighed at the change in texture.

Stiles gasped as he moved down those last few inches to his hip, and Derek’s breath caught. He started to press in before Derek gripped his hips, pressing him to the floor. He buried his face to the side of Stiles’ hip, and Stiles heard him sucking in ragged breaths.

“I think,” Derek said, “We need to stop here, or we’re not going to stop.” Stiles let his body writhe a few more times before cooling, letting his hands gentle in Derek’s hair, easing them both down.

After a few more breaths, he pulled him up, tucking his head into his bruised shoulder. Derek arranged himself so he was carefully lying beside him, with a proprietary leg over his hip but no blanketing.

Stiles’ fingers lazily traced down, following the line of marks across his chest and down to right above his pants. He pressed in and felt the stinging difference between the marked and unmarked skin. He looked, and from what he could see in the low light, he had patches of different colors scattered over his chest and ribs, with a final round by his hip. He grinned into Derek’s hair, saying:  
  
“I love them.” Derek nudged in closer to his neck, nodding just a little bit:

“I’m glad,” he said, “I’m glad it was a good birthday.”

Stiles nodded, crooking a sideways grin and saying, “you know, there’s not any way this could trump what’s coming next year.”

He could feel Derek’s grin this time, and curved into the suddenly tight arm around his waist.

“Just one more year left,” a bit of silence, where Stiles started to sink into a drowse, just hearing, “And then I am going to take you apart at the seams.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you'd like me to write the other 2 options? I think it could be fun, but I live to serve. And so might Derek if you all like Door Number 2.


	5. Bondage (for real this time)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles uses up the second of his three birthday presents. This is my last update on this one for a while, because NaNo will have me in its tentacles, but if you'd like a particular scene or option 3, let me know!

“So,” Stiles said, propping his hip against the open apartment door, framed by the late summer afternoon sunlight and waiting until Derek looked up from his laptop to meet his eyes: “Bondage?”

 

Derek’s eyes got wide and flicked to the open door, ears seeming to strain to hear if anyone was in the hallway who could have conceivably heard Stiles. Stiles grinned and stepped inside, tapping the door closed with his foot.

 

Derek’s mouth was still a little bit open, and he had yet to make a sound.

 

“You,” Stiles pointed, “me,” he pointed at himself, “bedroom,” he pointed to the slightly open door. He then paused, trying to come up with an appropriate gesture, finally circling his fingers: “Handcuffs? No, that’s not really good enough for handcuffs, maybe,” and he gripped his own wrist and showed it to Derek. Before he could venture further into developing semiotics for their no-sex life, Derek was standing in front of him, his hands on Stiles’ wrists.

 

“This is a thing we need to talk about,” he said, “because it could skirt pretty close to some of The Rules.”

 

Stiles stepped those last few inches into Derek’s personal space and pressed his face into the crook of his neck. “Ok,” he said, Derek letting his wrists got and Stiles winding his arms around his waist. “So: talk.”

 

Derek pulled away and led him to the couch by their tangled fingers. “No touching while we have this discussion.” At Stiles’ fallen look, he amended: “not much touching.”

 

Stiles nodded and sat, keeping a careful few inches of space between their legs, but keeping his grip on Derek’s fingers.

 

“So we already know your safe word is ‘Finstock’ and mine is ‘Sheriff,’” Stiles began.

 

Derek squeezed his hand, “And you know about my possible issues around being tied up with my arms over my head, or general possible issues with this kind of loss of control.”

 

Stiles nodded, “That’s why I was thinking we’d start with me,”

 

Derek paused, gulping a little and then shook it off.

 

“That could be fun,” he started in a level voice, “but what are you looking to get out of it?”  
  
Stiles flailed a bit, trying to hand-speak his motivations. “I think it has something to do with a quieter brain? I’ve read that it can be calming? I don’t like taking orders most of the time, but I thought it would be worth trying,” he grinned sideways, “and I know you won’t abuse the privilege.”

 

Derek ducked his head, “ _Probably_ , not. I’m not perfect with the self-control with you, but I’ll honor the trust.”

 

Stiles inched closer until their legs were flush: “Did we need to go over anything else?” He slid their joined hands over to Derek’s knee, “because I’d kind of like to get started.”

 

“I can cover the last part while we’re setting up,” Derek said, standing and pulling Stiles with him. His cool demeanor contrasted with the tight hold he kept on Stiles’ fingers all the way to the bedroom.

 

“I just want to be clear about what we’re going to do,” he said to the dresser as he dug through it one handed, pulling a box out of the back. He separated their hands briefly to open the box and Stiles took the chance to sit on the bed, scooting back until his back rested on the single pillow and the headboard.

 

Stiles nodded and Derek turned, box with suspicious pink paper left open on top of the dresser. He was stretching two leather cuffs, connected by another loop of leather between his hands. They looked like they had something soft and possibly fuzzy on the inside. He walked towards Stiles until his thighs were touching the bed, and held out the restraints.

 

“I’m going to put these around your wrists,” and Stiles breath stilled in his chest, “and attach it to the top of the frame.” Stiles wrists started to tingle, “I’m going to kiss you, and touch you, and you won’t be able to touch me back, with your hands at least,” Stiles’ hips arched up at that a bit and Derek stuttered, leaning forward before pulling himself in and standing straight again. “And you can’t do _that_ , or anything else that is friction-causing. Because neither of us is coming from this, at least while the other is present.”

 

Stiles cocked his head at this, starting to ask before Derek anticipated his question and answered,

 

“This might be, intense. It can be, I think, when there’s a power exchange. So we’ll be a bit more flexible with what you can do in my apartment, in my bed.”

 

Stiles eyes widened, “You mean, you’d let me…”

 

“This is a continuation of a birthday present, so yeah, but you’ll have to give me 90 seconds to get out of the building and a few blocks away, so I can’t hear what’s going on and can’t track your heartbeat.”

 

Stiles felt a quiet grin blooming. He was so ready to get started.

 

Derek crawled onto the bed, using just his knees and muscles Stiles was pretty sure weren’t standard-issue for humans. He was keeping the handcuffs stretched between his two hands and Stiles could see nearly nothing else. Derek sat beside him, sharing a bit of the pillow, and took one hand from where Stiles had carefully laid it on his knee. He slipped it inside the cuff.

 

It was softer than he expected, and as Derek showed him how he was tightening it, and how to get it back off, Stiles started to feel a warm silence in the back of his ribs. He thought he was sitting on the pillow wrong, and moved to adjust the bloodflow, but nothing changed, the feeling spread to the front of his torso. He felt as Derek pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, and then wrapped the cuff around it. He felt the stretch as Derek anchored first one arm and then the other. He tugged the restraints, felt their total lack of give, and it was like he was floating.

 

Not the behind-the-head distance he got when he was exhausted after a run, or getting yelled at in school, but like his eyes were golden-focused, air heavy like he was in a sauna. Dimly, he heard Derek say his name, and he swam back to the surface, pulling himself into a cooler reality by his collar:

 

“Stiles, you still with me?”

 

Stiles grinned slowly: “Sure, keptin, whatever you say.”

 

Derek shook his head: “You can’t be too out of it if you’re being Checkov, but I can honestly say there will be absolutely no _Star Trek_ roll-play—this time.”

 

Stiles brain normally would have shorted out at the held-out hope, but that factoid just blinked as a point of interest and settled slowly to the bottom of the pool of his mind, past hovering layers of worry. He could see it, see it would come back. It looked like his Dad’s face, college applications, the pack’s drama, his virginity, the Jeep’s buzzing muffler, the size of the state budget deficit and his ongoing hatred of running, but it was all held back. Held back with exactly the same pressure he felt on his wrists.

 

Derek laid a palm against Stiles face and repeated softly: “You with me?”  
  
Stiles nodded and Derek smiled. “Ok, I’m going to start with kissing you, and touching you a bit, does that sound like a good plan?” Stiles nodded sleepily, but gasped when Derek nipped his ear.

 

Derek nuzzled his nose in behind his ear, murmuring: “I’m going to need affirmative and verbal consent this time,” and Stiles groaned, pushing out: “Yes, kissing sounds good, yes, good, yes,”

 

Derek grinned into the side of his face, crawling up onto the bed next to him and laying down, keeping those few, narrow inches between their bodies. Stiles stayed still, though he knew a bit of a hip roll would get them in one long line of contact. Derek moved until Stiles could look him in the eye, and waited until their eyes locked. He carefully lifted a hand, and drifted it in the air above Stiles’ body. He could feel the low muscles in Stiles’ stomach tense when he passed over them, Stiles nearly pressing himself backwards to avoid pressing up into that warm hand.

 

Derek skimmed the hand up over his shoulder, then curled his fingers over and ran them down the back of Stiles’ arm until he got to his hand. Then he ran just the pads of 2 fingers over the back of Stiles’ hand, and watched as he clenched it into a fist, held it for a few beats, then relaxed, turning it palm up.

 

That sight was so open, so willing and so vulnerable Derek’s breath caught. He hovered for a moment, trying to decide the most sensitive part of touch down on, before dipping his finger into Stiles’ palm, stroking up to his thumb, then back down into his palm, tracing each finger as he breathed in the smell of growing tension.

 

He spread his palm flat over Stiles and interlaced their fingers, gripping warm and solid. He leaned in for a light kiss and Stiles delved into his mouth, kissing like it was his only source of air and calm and life. Derek took the intensity and returned it with slowness, not letting Stiles set tempo, keeping an eye on his restrained arms, coaxing him into a tight push and pull of lips and tongues. Derek started to move his body against Stiles and then stopped himself.

 

He focused that urge into his mouth and lips, telling Stiles every tiny secret he could scrape from his mind, without using words. All letting him know and hold them, and Stiles gave them back, gave pressure and softness and openness. He tried to set the pace a few more times but Derek kept pulling him back into a slow building.

 

At Stiles’ first frustrated noise Derek moved from his lips to his neck, not putting enough pressure to pull a hickie to the surface, but enough to leave the skin tight and sensitive under his lips. He moved as far as Stile’s collar before working his way to the other side. He adjusted his hand out of Stiles’ so he could lean over his body, and he felt Stiles arch his chest up so they stayed touching.

 

The pressure between their chests was fluttering, because Stiles was breathing so fast, hands strainging against the cuffs. Derek kissed back up to Stiles’ mouth and kissed his breath back. But no amount of slowing from Derek could calm Stiles now, and every new touch brought a new whimper of appreciation. Derek was a moment from running his hand over the writhing body, pulling them together and just letting go, when he pulled himself back, taking in the sight of Stiles laid out and blissed out before him.

 

He ran one, slow, controlled hand over Stiles’ ribs and up to his face. He pulled him to look at his face, and waited until he made good eye-contact.

 

“I’m going to untie you, and then I need for you to wait 90 seconds or more for me to get out of hearing range before you do anything.”

 

Stiles eyes got big, and Derek thought he was going to object, but then consciousness like a shutter came down over them and Stiles curled his lips under his teeth and nodded. Derek made swift work of the cuffs and suddenly Stiles was all the way wrapped around him. He was about to extricate himself with a little bit of force— _this is not what we agreed_ —when he tuned in to what Stiles was saying.

 

“I just, I need, I need a little bit of time, I need to come down, it’s, it’s aftercare? I don’t need to get off, but I don’t want to be alone, don’t leave, I won’t, I promise, just don’t leave, not just yet,” and Derek’s heart broke, a little bit.

 

“Sure, yeah, sure, we can do that. Why don’t you,” but Stiles wouldn’t release his arms from around Derek’s torso, so he sort of moved them to the middle of the bed and arranged Stiles so his head was pillowed on his arm and their ankles were intertwined. Their hips were carefully apart, and Derek did nothing so forward as kissing his hair or stroking his back, but just let him come down, ticking off the beats of his heart that were slower than the ones before.

 

Eventually Stiles took a deep breath, then another, and on the third said: “I think if you wanted to take a run, I could take care of this situation,” Derek felt him hand-flail behind his back, gesturing at his cock, “And then you can come back and cuddle some more?”

 

“Sure, if you’re sure you’re ok?”  
  
Stiles pulled back enough so Derek could see his face: “I’m great, that was fun, it was just, intense? I just needed some centering before I went off a cliff.”

 

Derek nodded slowly, “Ok, we can talk more about what worked and what didn’t later,” Stiles nodded and Derek pulled back, getting himself off the bed and walking backwards out of the room.

 

“See you soon,”

 

Stiles grinned, hand already drifting to his groin, “Yep, probably not very long at this rate.”

 

Derek threw him a quick smile before sprinting to the door, getting it open, and taking the stairs as fast as he could, trying not to hear as Stiles’ heartbeat began to pickup in anticipation.

 

\--

 

Stiles thought he was going to pass out. No, not really, because he’d calmed down, but if he didn’t get off in the next 2 minutes, he was going to explode. Every time he thought about Derek— _pressure of the cuffs, hands on his face, hands on his wrists, finger circling his palm, hand on his stomach_ —different parts of his body tingled and clenched.

 

He rolled onto his face, slipping his hand between his legs. If he was going to jack off on Derek’s bed, he was going to get his smell _everywhere_. He spread his legs and bucked long and slow into the sheets. They were soft and warm, he moved to the side, until he was in a cool spot. He was getting into the groove when he took a deep breath through his nose and took off in an entirely different direction.

 

Everything smelled so much of sex and Derek. He didn’t usually involve Derek explicitly in his fantasies, since part of him didn’t want to make assumptions and possibly mix up reality and fantasy.

 

But this time, all he could imagine was Derek behind him, _on top of him_ , pressing him into the mattress. He pushed his hips up, getting himself more space but also putting his ass in the air. He imagined how he looked, so open and vulnerable, and the look on Derek’s face if he saw him that way. Stiles grunted and pushed into his fist, pitching and rolling, barely keeping a rhythm, barely keeping stable.

 

The feeling of Derek’s imagined dick behind him, just pressing towards but not in, that was enough and Stiles was coming, into his hand, onto Derek’s sheets, pretty much everywhere.

 

Stiles sighed, enjoying the rush-crush of emotions running through his body, before pulling himself off the bed to get some toilet-paper to clean-up with. That done, he yanked the comforter out of the closet and set to work building himself a nest. He plumped up the pillows and then scooted so far down his head was barely resting on one. He made sure the blanket was lying flat and square over the entire bed, and then thrashed it between his legs until he was all wrapped up.

 

Too hot, he kicked free a foot and flopped onto his stomach. Then he realized the lights were still on, and knowing Derek had no need for them, he extricated himself from the cover-pile, flipped off the switch, and dove back into bed, phantom talons reaching out from under the bed for him.

 

Then he waited.

 

Derek, for his part, was still running. He could imagine so clearly what Stiles was doing in his bed, the amount of scent-spreading, the angle of his thrusts, his mind wasn’t letting himself get away from it.

 

Not that he really wanted to get away from it. He wanted to fly back to Stiles, swallow him down, and just enjoy the feel of him getting off. He didn’t like blue-ballsing it every single time, he _wanted_ Stiles.

 

He just didn’t want him yet. He knew he could handle some kinds of adult stuff, but his first time at sex had surprisingly long-lasting influences on how a he’d seen himself and interacted with other people, what he’d hidden and what he’d shown to anyone he got close to since then, and he only wanted to best of all possible experiences for Stiles. He turned around, and started running back towards the house.


	6. The End of The Rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were some things Stiles knew about Derek and sex. To keep himself from going crazy in the 12 minutes it took to drive from his house to Derek’s apartment, from 11:45 – 11:57pm on the night before his 18th birthday, he listed them to himself, tapping out an impatient beat on his Jeep’s steering wheel as he drove.

There were some things Stiles knew about Derek and sex. To keep himself from going crazy in the 12 minutes it took to drive from his house to Derek’s apartment, from 11:45 – 11:57pm on the night before his 18th birthday, he listed them to himself, tapping out an impatient beat on his Jeep’s steering wheel as he drove.

1)   Necks had a special place in werewolf intimacy. Licking, biting, sucking, the front of the neck for fondness, the back for dominance, a cheek against a partner’s neck for scent-marking, and hand placed on the front of the neck for control. Necks were erotic.

2)   Derek liked to watch Stiles enjoy himself. It wasn’t just sex; Derek had knocked over a PTA mom on his way to hug Stiles after his first game played fully on the field. But they both thought it would be during sex too.

3)   Stiles needed to be overwhelmed to get in the moment. It wasn’t that Derek’s own self wasn’t enough, he was, but Stiles’ mind was a rabbit’s warren and at any moment his thought processes could jump down and bound away, taking his arousal with it. So, lot’s of sensation was good.

4)   Derek had a wide-ranging imagination. This could be great for coming up with ways to distract Stiles from his many other sensory inputs and to get him to focus on touch, but it could also make him a cautious lover, concerned about any hidden triggers even when Stiles assured him he was fine.

5)   Derek had triggers. His arms above his head, certain words and phrases, the implication he was using Stiles’ youth against him. He’d shut down, and no amount of coaxing could get him back. Only time and space worked.

6)   Stiles had kinks, or at least baby-kinks. He’d liked the handcuffs on him, he liked making out in public, he liked the handcuffs on Derek, he liked writing about him and Derek. He liked being overwhelmed, and that might be by so many sensations all at once or that might be by strong sensations, but he _liked_ it.

7)   Derek wanted Stiles’ first time to be safe and wonderful. Stiles knew there was a lot wrapped up in this night, they’d both been talking about it and fantasizing about it, and they had a rough outline, but he knew Derek was putting a lot of pressure on himself over it and he didn’t want it to go wrong.

Stiles paused at the last stoplight before Derek’s block and slapped the steering wheel in frustration. He glanced down at the clock: 11:52pm. He must have been speeding something fierce.

He started to bargain with himself. He could show up before midnight, could be kissing Derek, it was only the actual, legal sex that couldn’t happen until midnight. Derek would go along with it, he was sure. Derek wanted this as much as he did.

Stiles sighed, and idled at the empty stoplight even after it turned green. He couldn’t do that to them. They had an agreement, it was part of The Rules. And he wasn’t going to try and weasel out of it at the last moment. He turned left instead of right, and went around the block.

He bet Derek could hear him coming, could tell he was circling. He let a hand drop into his lap, rocking into it a bit, as he thought about Derek sitting on the couch, no, standing in front of the door, listening and waiting for Stiles to run up the stairs and let himself in. He imagined his wide-open face and grinned at the thought. 11:56pm.

He parked outside of Derek’s apartment, barely getting locked up before hurling himself up the front stairs. He jiggled and antsed and from foot to foot waiting for the elevator before abandoning it and running to the back stairs. He took the steps two and three at a time, arrived at Derek’s door with a pounding heart and sweaty palms. 11:59pm.

He stood, knowing Derek could hear him breathing, not wanting to get his key out until the very last second. He could hear movement from the other side of the door. It swung open.

Derek looked _wrecked_. Stiles glanced at the phone in his hand a last time—12:00am—and dropped it just inside the door as he walked into Derek, pushing him back to kick the door closed with a foot. His hands were in the were’s hair, and Derek’s mouth hot and tight on his. There wasn’t an inch of space between their hips, and Stiles bucked up gratefully. Derek kept walking backwards, Stiles yanking his jacket off and toeing off his shoes as they stumbled into his couch.

Derek got his hands under Stiles’ shirts and scrunching it up so he could begin to lick his way down Stiles’ chest, lowering himself to the couch as Stiles ran hands over his shoulders and into his hair.

He started on Stiles’ collarbone, pressing open-mouthed kiss after open-mouthed kiss in, pulling just enough to redden the skin but not enough to mark him— _yet_ , Stiles thought giddily—and his one hand was steady on Stiles’ waist. He made it to a nipple and gave a quick lick, and Stiles nearly overbalanced. That was so much more intense when he knew they were going to follow-through, this time, for the first time.

Derek grinned into his skin and finished a last kiss on his stomach before sitting fully and pulling Stiles into his lap, straddling him, knees sinking into the soft cushions. Stiles ducked his head into Derek’s shoulder, breathing and Derek’s hands slowed, letting Stiles shirts settle back down as Stiles hands gentled in Derek’s hair, coming to rest on the back of his neck.

“Hi,” Stiles said.

“Hi yourself,” Derek whispered into his skin, pressing his mouth and tongue along the big vein in his neck. “Happy birthday.”

Stiles broke out a cracked chuckle and he could feel Derek’s face scrunch into a grin.

“We still good to go?” Derek asked, hands slow on Stiles’ back.

“ _Fuck_ yes,” Stiles answered, trailing a hand down Derek’s chest and resting at the top of his jeans.

“Can I?” He started, and Derek nodded.

Stiles’ breath hitched and he got under the edge of Derek’s shirt, watching him pull his stomach back to make unbuttoning it easier, eyes diving down into the dark space between his skin and the denim.

He got the jeans open as Derek’s hands started to tighten on his hips, fingers steadying him or himself, Stiles didn’t know. He could see him, half-hard and ready, through his black briefs.

Stiles let out a sharp breath and pulled his head back to rest on Derek’s forehead, hand so close. He kept breathing, and kept not moving his hand.

“You ok?” Derek murmured, breath on Stiles’ face.

“Yeah, it’s just, I didn’t really think we’d get to do this. I’ve been waiting, you’ve been waiting, and, it’s just surprising.” His voice was smaller than he would have liked, less sure, but just as he started to fell the need to buck up, to pretend he was ok, 2 years of experience being just this vulnerable, if not more so, with Derek came crashing into his mind. And he stilled, and eased his hands down over Derek’s briefs.

He was _hot_. Hot and full in his hand, and the _sound_ he made at the first deliberate touch. Stiles catalogued and filed it in an instant in his memory’s deepest archive. The next one was even better, as Stiles slide his hand deeper in, getting a feel for his shape, until the ridges of the zipper dug into his hand. He eased his fingers around what he could reach of him, running a thumb up the back, just feeling the articulation of a vein.

Stiles was so fixated on the feel of Derek in his hand, it took him a moment to realize Derek’s forehead was no longer against his. He glanced up, hand still rubbing and exploring, to see Derek’s head flung back, neck outstretched and undefended, great heaving breaths coming up from out of his chest.

Stiles felt that gratitude again, at the trust and at the shared lust. He kept his face back—another time, he would dive in, test that trust with a well-placed nip—but for now he wanted to focus on the piece of the man in his hand.

“Pants, off,” he said, back of his hand starting to prickle at too much contact with Derek’s zipper.

“Hmm?” Derek said before easing his head back up and swooping down to take part of Stiles’ neck in his mouth.

Mouth still on Stiles’ ever-more sensitive skin, Derek said: “I don’t think we need to go there yet, we still have some time.”

Stiles grumbled but eased his hand back until it was just his fingertips. He focused on the head of Derek’s cock, rolling it between his fingers, and feeling around the shape with his thumb. He was startled for a moment to find wetness at the tip, but the moment he did a whole host of other sensations hit him.

The _smell_ for one. It was like sweat and parched lemons and afternoon sunshine. The tiny sounds of them adjusting their weight on the couch, of Derek’s panting breaths, and there, on his back, that was new. Derek was easing his shirt back up, catching the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, rutching it up to Stiles’ underarms.

Stiles lifted his arms, letting Derek peel the last few inches off of him. As soon as his head was free and Derek was tossing the shirt on the end of the couch, Stiles was digging his fingers under the hem of Derek’s black t, pulling it up. As usual, Derek’s shirt was a size too small, and while Stiles usually appreciated that for the view, in this case it made him fear for his almost-lover’s nose as he pulled the too-narrow shirt-collar over his face. Derek helped and Stiles once he was free Stiles leaned in to kiss his collarbone. He didn’t know if he could ever get enough of the salty-unexpected taste, but he wanted to try to overload himself early in the evening.

Derek’s mouth sought his. Stiles angled his mouth until it was just so, just enough for their noses and the perfect amount of pressure. Derek swept his tongue into his mouth. This part had often been hesitant, testing, tasting in their make-out sessions but there was nothing of that now. This was _possessing_.

Stiles loved it.

Derek’s dull fingertips swept broad arcs over Stiles’ still-clothed back, pressing in over his wings and massaging his hips. Stiles lifted himself up a bit to adjust closer to Derek’s chest and Derek took the opportunity to grip around his ass and _squeeze_.

It startled a moan out of Stiles that Derek swallowed and then chased with another squeeze for more. Stiles reared up and then pressed in, hard cock still trapped by his jeans and pressed into Derek’s abs. Derek let out a moan of his own at the renewed contact and Stiles took Derek’s shoulder, tucked his knee into his hip, and tipped them both sideways, turning himself on his back and pulling Derek on top of him.

Derek took a moment to get with the program, adjusting his knees and getting an arm under Stiles’ neck, but in a moment Stiles was covered by him, legs and arms wrapped like an octopus. Derek refused to lose lip-contact, refused to go a moment without breathing Stiles’ air. Stiles newly freed hands gripped him under the arms, holding on while Derek’s single free arm worked its way between them, rubbing over his pecs and winding its slow and teasing way down his torso.

Derek made it to his jeans, trailing fingers under the hem, playing with the edges of his underwear. Stiles moved his own hands down Derek’s back, pressing his hips down and arching up into the pressure, the feeling bringing one long writhe after another until he had to pull their hips apart lest he end his first partnered orgasm in his pants, dick untouched by calloused skin.

“I’m gonna get you out of these,” Derek muttered, hands slipping on the button of Stiles’ jeans.

“Yeah, you do that.” Stiles panted, “And then, you too,” he spoke with his words broken by gasps.

Derek finally got a grip on the button and popped it open, Stiles freezing at the sensation of air and the light pressure of the zipper rolling down over his hard dick. Derek paused, hunched over Stiles’ open pants, eyes wide at the clear shape beneath his briefs. He hovered a hand over and looked up into Stiles eyes for permission. Stiles nodded, slipping his lip between his teeth, steeling himself for the sensation.

It was more than he could have expected, tight and light and hard and warm. It was like touching himself in that he trusted the pressure to be right, the movements to be soft and sure, but totally unlike touching himself in that he didn’t know where the touch was going to go, whether a callous would catch or a thumb circle his head.

He arched up into the sensation, and Derek grunted, lifted off Stiles’ hips to give him the space he needed for the movement. Stiles sucked in a breath over his bitten lip and forced his eyes open, staring into Derek’s.

“Take. Off. Your. Pants.” He said in a low voice, bringing his hands down to Derek’s hips and plucking at the hem. Derek nodded, eyes still caught by Stiles’ erection, but moving swiftly to get out of the jeans. He unbuttoned and unzipped, and Stiles sat up, resting his weight on his elbows to get a better view. He hooked his thumbs in the sides of his pants, and then made eye contact with Stiles before glancing down. In one motion, he pulled his pants and briefs down, eyes sticking to the carpet as he pulled his socks and pants off.

Fully naked Derek was nothing Stiles could have fully prepared for. He knew the shape of his body under his clothes, had felt it pressed against his many times in sleep and in dreaming. But seeing it, in the growing moonlight light, was different.

He was about to deep-dive into thinking through how he felt at the sight of Derek uncovered, when Derek shifted his body to the side, head down, eyes still not making contact. Hiding himself. Stiles snapped back into reality, into what was happening and what Derek might be feeling. Without a further thought, he launched himself off the couch to wrap a low hug around Derek’s torso.

“You look amazing,” he told Derek’s breastbone. “I am so lucky to get to do this with you.”

Derek’s hands alighted on his head and shoulder, tracing small patterns down his neck and arm. Stiles kept a tight grip, burrowing his head down into the soft skin of his chest, pressing his cheek in deep. A few breaths in, he pressed a bit harder and said with wonder underpinning his words:

“I can hear your heartbeat.”

“And what does it tell you?” Derek said, in a low and quiet voice.

Stiles flattened his hand against Derek’s back, backing up until he could sit on the edge of the couch with Derek standing between his legs. He listened again and said:  
  
“It’s telling me…” he paused and pressed in tighter still, “that you want to have sex with me.” He aimed a smirk up in Derek’s general direction, pressing his lips to Derek’s ribs, far from his abs.

Blindly, he traced a hand down Derek’s arm until he found his hand and looped their fingers together. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss into the dip just above Derek’s hipbone, balancing himself with his other hand on Derek’s opposite hip. He stroked up and down the outside of Derek’s thigh, and began working his was around towards Derek’s front.

He felt a brush against his shoulder, and Derek’s cock came into full view. It was full and red, a bit curved to the left, but a nice-looking curve. He took a deep breath and leaned his head down when Derek’s hand caught his jaw and pulled him up for a kiss.

“Not quite yet,” he said, and Stiles groaned, missing what he imagined the shape of it would be in his mouth as they stood, chests together again.

Derek slipped his hands down the back of Stiles’ pants, pressing him to his front while wandering his fingertips down into his briefs. He lifted them back out, catching the edge of Stiles’ shirt and working it off over his shoulders, watching as he bowed and curved with the shape of the movement.

Derek couldn’t look at him all at once, but gripped his biceps, fitting his thumb into the dip where it became a triceps and smoothing his entire hand down to grip his forearm. The hair started fine and soft and grew denser as he moved down. His fingertips were alive with every sensation, every bump and change of Stiles’ skin. The moonlight rubbed shadows into the curves of his arms, and kissed his shoulders gold.

Derek looked at Stiles sideways. He saw glimpses of a heaving chest, covered only by an undershirt, a sucked-in stomach, hips canted forward seeking friction he wasn’t yet providing. He felt Stiles’ gaze on him, dipping down to his hips and then swooping back up, unable to keep still. Stiles shifted his weight from side to side, rolling his shoulders back and flicking his fingers against each other.

But he let Derek look his fill, let him look at the sharp curve of his hip-bone, protruding from his pants and his hiked-up undershirt. All sound and smell came rushing back, Stiles’ breathing and his sweat and tangy arousal; the hush of wind against the wall of the building; the smell of the wool rug. But touch was above everything else right now, touch was the feeling of Stiles’ exposed skin under his palm, under his fingertips.

Stiles couldn’t take the waiting anymore and wrapped himself around Derek, feet tangling, balance subjugated to the need to be closer _now_. Derek hooked his hand around Stiles’ waist, steadying him, and Stiles stepped into him, long, bare arm laying against his chest and around to the back of his neck, pulling him in for an open-mouthed kiss.

Derek’s hands came back up inside Stiles’ undershirt, lifting it as Stiles leaned his hips back, wiggling to help it come over his head, giving spirit fingers and huffing when it coiled around his wrists. He grinned as Derek tossed it into the pile of his clothing and wrapped his arms around him, pushing his newly-bare chest against Derek’s before he could look too long or hard.

The sensation of skin-against-skin was new and fully amazing. The moonlight had warmed Derek beyond his usual heightened temperature, and Stiles could feel its sideways-rays glancing off his fingers as he gripped them into Derek’s shoulders, arms under his arms, clinging tightly and breathing in his scent.

The smell had begun to change, was getting sharper, purer, in a way it had the few times they’d made mistakes, had gone further than they intended to. It smelled like Derek after a long run, or after a scare during a creature-fight, but also nothing like it. It smelled like budding undergrowth.

Derek leaned into Stiles’ grip as he touched his fingers together at the center of Stiles’ back, dragging parallel lines down the edges of his spine, pressing harder the farther down he went. He got to Stiles’ pants and slipped just the tips of his fingers under, Stiles undulating at the renewed promise, mouthing his neck, increased breath pushing his chest against Derek’s.

Slow as sinning, Derek slid his fingers around to the front of Stiles pants, feeling the button of his jeans, mere centimeters from where he knew Stiles’ erect cock to be. He could tell Stiles was canting his hips up, arcing his back, straining into him. But Derek kept the distance, kept his fingers away from the cotton-clothed heat. There was a noise coming from Stiles’ throat now, something close to a whine, or maybe a chant.

He punctuated each breath with another press of his mouth, designing a pattern Derek couldn’t interpret on his bare shoulder. Derek shuddered at the heat-cold contrast between where Stiles’ mouth was and had been. He shuddered again and that brought his nakedness into contact with Stiles’ clothed cock, and pushed just the tips of his fingers to brushing Stiles’ head. Stiles jerked forward, a moan punched out, coming deep from his gut. He hitched a leg behind Derek’s calf, trying to get in, curve his hips around, get _closer_.

Derek got himself the bare inch back he needed to unbutton Stiles’ pants and peel the zipper down. Stiles pushed his arms straight, the sudden distance between their skin terrible, but the look on his face was consuming as he watched Derek ease his pants from his hips, as he knelt in one motion, pulling them to his ankles. Stiles kept his arms on Derek’s shoulders for balance, and for a moment he felt worshiped, this man at his feet, the cresting moon smoothing the curve of his spine into one long line. He stepped out of his pants, and was for a moment left standing in just his briefs, Derek tossing the cloth onto the pile.

He looked at the line of Derek’s body as he pulled his arm back after tossing the pants, and made a decision. Like Derek, he hooked his thumbs under his briefs and pulled them all the way down, hitching his foot up to get them off one ankle and then the next. He was focused on tossing this last, least item into the pile he didn’t catch the first flash Derek had of seeing his body revealed.

It was a look of nearly painful wonder. Derek’s eyes were wide, his hands flexing, his breath hitching. He could feel warmth and possession and a need to protect the vulnerability before him, but then Stiles stood fully, towering over Derek, still on his knees. And he felt another wave, this time it was drawn up by the strength in Stiles’ shoulders, the expanse of his hands, hanging loosely, calloused and well-known. It was in his steady and steadying gaze, and the way he leaned down to grip Derek’s shoulder, easing him up to his feet.

Standing in front of Stiles, both without armor, he felt protected. Felt like a cub when knew, _knew_ , that family meant safe. And that naked was safe, and that home was safe, and that family and skin and touch were safe. There were also feelings now he’d never had as a cub, feelings exclusive to his now-adult body, but those feelings of family were everywhere, etched into every line of Stiles body. Derek let himself be drawn up, felt Stiles’ hand shiver down the outside of his arm, fingers tangling in his own.

“Well, that’s it,” Stiles said. “That’s all the clothes we’ve got.” He waited, then stepped a little closer, keeping his entire body away from Derek’s but raising a hand to his jaw.

“You still with me? This too much?”

And Derek leaned into that touch, into the scents coming off of his wrist and from his nude body, and slowly shook his head.

“It’s wonderful. You’re wonderful.”

Stiles grinned, all cocky headiness. “Well, we knew that. Now, I suddenly can’t remember the plan, being naked and all.”

Half of Derek’s mouth curved up, predatory and joyful all at the same time.

“Well,” he started, “first you sit there,” and he turning Stiles and tapping on his chest, backing him up until his shins hit the couch and he collapsed backward onto it, Derek following the motion with a flattened hand until Stiles was sitting all the way back against the pillows, Derek’s body curved over him.

“And then I,” he removed his hand from Stiles chest and pointing his thumb at himself:

“Kneel here,” and he did so, “and you,” this time his hand started at Stiles’ knee, brushing with the backs of his fingers all the way to Stiles’ hip, which he gripped, working slow circles into the crest of it with his thumb.

“Enjoy your first blowjob.”

Stiles’ breath wooshed out, and he leaned forward, a hand on Derek’s shoulder to pause a forward motion he hadn’t yet started.

“And then I get to do you, right?”

“Hmm,” Derek hummed, “We’ll see what you’re up to,” beginning to lean forward.

“No, “ Stiles said, grip tightening. “We will. I want it to be both of us.” His face was set.

Derek covered his hand with his own. “Ok, we will. Both of us.”

At the look in his eyes Stiles nodded and pulled back, removing his hand and settling it beside his thigh.

Derek took this chance when his knees couldn’t go out under him to enjoy the view. Stiles was leaning back, eyes on Derek’s, hands curled loosely. Only the tick in his jaw gave away any tension his was carrying. His skin was a mix of pale and golden, depending on the sun and sun-exposure. It was palest around his waist. This only made the red of his cock clearer.

Stiles was hard, pressed tight against his own stomach, straight up and down. His balls hung a little asymmetrically, close between his thighs, begging for attention. His cock was moving with each breath, but also twitching to the beat of his heart, the two rhythms hypnotic. Worried he would be distracted from his chosen task, Derek closed his eyes.

He dipped his head, pressing a closed-mouth kiss to Stiles knee and the sound of sucked-in breath was enough his make his own cock jump against his stomach. He flicked his tongue out, catching the salty taste, the rough hair, the bone shape before bringing it back in his mouth to savor. Too much to just taste, he opened his mouth, pressing and kissing and nipping his way up Stiles’ leg, easing his way between his hips until Stiles was spread open before him, legs bracketing his shoulders, and he was working his mouth to the inside of Stiles’ thigh. Just as his hair was about to brush Stiles’ cock, he pulled off, and took a survey of the man before him.

Head back, neck stretched out, hands curled into tight fists. Breath coming in in deep, too-deep-to-be-easy breaths. Shoulders tense, stomach tense, thighs relaxed. But his face, oh his face. Open, eyes closed, mouth flushed with lip-biting, those deep breaths coming through parted lips, eyebrows raised in expectation.

Then Stiles tilted his head down, eyes opening lazily at the interruption in sensation, and grinned. It was all entitlement, the sure look of a trusted and trusting partner. He was enjoying the wait and the tension and the yearning, but nothing in his look held fear he would be left hanging, hard and unsure and uncomfortable. Everything in it spoke of faith.

Derek felt like he’d aced a relationship final, and with that burst in his chest he took Stiles into his mouth. He knew Stiles’ eyes had just brushed from honey to molasses in one blink, wider and shocked. In the jerk of Stiles’ knees, Derek felt him yank a breath into his body, studied steadiness gone. His hips bucked into Derek’s mouth and Derek took the intrusion, welcomed it.

Derek pulled up, replacing his lips with a loose fist. Stiles tasted salty and raw and good, the heat of him and the tiny movements of his hips too much to think about all at once. Derek pushed his nose into the juncture of Stiles’ hip and groin, enjoying the textures and smells. He felt a tentative hand brush over the back of his head, fingers slipping between the strands of his hair, blunt nails feeling their way to his scalp.

Derek pushed a kiss into that tender skin, and then moved back, tilting his head to kiss the side of Stiles’ shaft. It was a small kiss, almost chaste, but at the renewed sensation Stiles’ fingers flexed in his hair, and then they froze.

“I, I’m—“ he started to apologize, but Derek shook his head, lips brushing Stiles’ cock as he said:

“It’s ok. Don’t hold me down, but a little hair-pulling is fine.” Then he pressed his closed mouth to Stiles’ cock, spreading his lips in a grin before working his way to the crown and swallowing him down again. Stiles back arched and it took some quick maneuvering to avoid losing his mouthful of Stiles’ cock. Derek pulled him in closer with an arm around the back of his waist, lifting an errant leg onto his shoulder and running his tongue around the head of Stiles’ cock.

Stiles keened at the sensation, hips twisting and twitching with an urgent-but-withheld need to buck into the warmth encompassing him. Derek denied him that rhythm and began stroking his hand up the thigh on his shoulder, eyes closed, feeling his way up the outside, pushing through the hair and the sweat to curve up and over to his smooth hip-bone. He kept up the pressure on Stiles’ cock, and dropped his elbow, pulling his hand under Stiles thigh and up to right near his balls.

Derek opened his eyes and took in the splayed-open and wrecked Stiles before him. His mouth was wide and red, eyes closed and head thrown on the couch-back. His neck was flushed with the blood frantically trying to cool itself when all other major arteries were too close to other hot skin. His stomach was twitching and heaving with each breath, each unevenly shallow and deep. The hand that was in Derek’s hair gentled, eased and circled, palm pressing, not guiding, just touching. Stiles’ other hand crept across his own stomach stroking up and down, trailing near a nipple and then away again.

Derek chuckled and murmured into the thigh he was returning to kiss,

“You can touch yourself, if you want to.” Derek said, as he slid his fingers under Stiles’ balls, cupping them and rolling them in his palm.

Stiles gasped and immediately grasped at his chest, pulling and tugging, each motion eliciting another jump of his stomach, another tensing of his thighs. But his hand stayed gentle in Derek hair, keeping him close, keeping him safe. Derek stroked a careful thumb across the delicate skin, feeling their tension and their weight, feeling them getting tighter and fuller with need. He kept them in his palm as he smiled into Stiles’ thigh and began working his way back to Stiles cock, wet and smearing across his stomach.

For better leverage, he inched closer to the couch, and felt his neglected dick brush against the rough cloth. He leaned into it, letting the thick fabric ease some of his own tension, the slightly-uncomfortable texture exactly what he needed to keep his focus. One rock turned into two, then another, and soon he’d found a lightly-brushing rhythm with his own hips he was matching with his mouth and hand.

He slid his free hand under Stiles hips, encouraging them up, encouraging him to thrust a little into his mouth, and at each renewed push Derek slid his hand up and then down again, keeping his mouth on Stiles. Stiles was trying to keep a steady ryhtm, but he kept breaking, bucking for a few moments before hissing a breath through his teeth and slowing down again. The bucking was getting longer and longer, and Derek rolling his balls faster and applied more pressure with his mouth. He pulled off for a moment and Stiles dick slapped against his stomach and he _whined_.

“Are you close?” Derek asked, hands on Stiles still, trying to will him to being able to verbalize a response. After a few moments of soundless nodded, Stiles managed to squeeze out:

“Yes, please, God yes.” Derek grinned a final time and then ducked his head back down, pulling Stiles in and back, starting a slow rhythm, Stiles keeping his hips in control and his breathing steady, the only indication of his tension the tight grip he kept on Derek’s hair and the bursts of salt Derek tasted on his tongue from his precome.

Derek sped up, hand on Stiles’ cock, lips tight, smells and sounds of Stiles getting closer and closer everywhere around him. His own hips echoed Stiles thrusts, not seeking enough friction to get off, just enough to be part of the full ride. He could feel him getting so close, and didn’t know what would get him over the falls, over this first great partnered-leap. Then Stiles’ hand in his hair gentled, and then left entirely, and without thinking Derek growled around Stiles’ cock, missing the tight-closeness of his hand. The growl came from deep in his chest, and rumbled up his throat and lips and Stiles was coming, shouting and groaning, salty come filling Derek’s mouth as he swallowed it and kept working Stiles lightly, pulling the last bits of it from him.

He kept mouthing at Stiles cock as it got loser and smaller, cleaning it thoroughly with his mouth before pulling off and crawling up into Stiles’ lap, arranging his sex-loosed body flat on his back, with Derek braced on his hip on the edge of the couch, leg thrown over Stiles’ legs, careful to keep his distance from his still-tender cock.

Derek contented himself with pressing his ear to Stiles chest, listening with his nerves as well as his ears as his heart rate climbed down from the mid-100s and into more stable territory.

As Stiles regained control over various bits of his body, he twitched his legs closer together, getting Derek more space on the couch, and began running his hand over Derek’s arm, the one clutching across his chest. The moon was rising, still low-hanging moon and large against the trees. Stiles’ body was etched in sepia tones.

Stiles started: “Good sex.”

Derek nodded and went back to listening to his heart-rate.

“That thing you did with my balls, I liked that.” Derek nodded and traced a triskele on Stiles’ bare stomach.

“And you give great head. I don’t know where you learned that, or how you managed it, but that, that was amazing.”

Derek smiled and rolled his head up to look Stiles in the face. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”

Stiles eyes closed and he said, voice artfully light: “And I, was I ok? As awesome as expected?”  
  
Derek huffed and rolled himself up and over Stiles’ hips, sitting on him until he opened his eyes and caught his expression. Derek could feel his wolf senses coming on line as the moon rose higher.

“There was nothing you could do to not be amazing, but if I didn’t know this would be a repeat performance, I would still have _years_ of material for my spank bank.”

Stiles nodded, a tiny grin creeping around the edges of his mouth.

“Yeah? So, I’m a sex-natural?”  
  
“You were great, though if you fish for any more compliments I _will_ stop humoring this fit of insecurity.”

Stiles harrumphed and then his eyes dropped and then shot back up. Derek followed their path and saw his own cock, still at half-mast and red with need.

“Can I help you with something?” Stiles said, gesturing vaguely at Derek’s waist.

“You don’t have to,”  
  
“ _Have_ to? Seriously? That cock. Get it up here.”

Derek gave Stiles a look, because that position was not going to work for long, but tried to shuffle up a bit. He paused, the physics getting difficult when Stiles sighed.

“Hold up, let’s do this another way.”

He ran his hands up Derek’s thighs, hands getting closer to his bare cock than he’d ever before, before sliding down and circling his knees.

“Floor.” Stiles said decisively.

“How on the floor?” Derek asked.

Stiles closed his eyes to think, but kept his hand circling, trailing his fingers along Derek’s skin.

“You on your back. I’ll be between your thighs, ok?”  
  
Derek nodded, “Ok, but remember, you don’t have to—“

“Seriously. Stop it with that.” Stiles sat up: “I. Want. To. Have. All. The. Sex. With. You. I’ve wanted it since I was 16, I’ve waited, I’ve researched, I’ve plotted and planned and kept both you and I alive so we could have this sex. Now, get off the couch and lay down on the floor. I’m about to rock your world.”  
  
Derek slid to the floor, centering himself on the worn-wool in front of the couch, lit by the rising moon. Stiles clambered down, bringing a few pillows with him. The light made their pale blue fabric nearly glow in the moonlight. He gestured for Derek to lift his head, and he tucked one under his head.

Then he gestured at his hips, and Derek lifted those too, with a look of confusion. Stiles concentrated as he arranged the pillow so it lay just above the crest of Derek’s ass. When he settled back down, it canted his hips up and his thighs settled open. He felt exposed, but took a breath and gave Stiles a querying look.

Stiles ducked his head. “It helps with the angle and blood flow. Prevents sore backs from sex.”  
  
“That doesn’t seem a likely problem, given my,” Derek started a hand-gesture he expect to convey “werewolfhood”, but then Stiles’ look shut him up.

“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it,” Stiles said and shuffled closer to the naked Derek on the rug.

But, inches away, he froze, hands at his sides. He kept making small, shifting movements closer to Derek and then pulling back.

Derek raised a hand up and stroked it down Stiles’ calf.  
  
“There’s no timer, we can just be for a bit.” Stiles ducked his head and Derek sought his hand, tugging until Stiles got with the program and slide down to lie beside Derek on the rug. He lay on one arm and flung the other over Derek’s waist.

“You remember the first time we did this?” Stiles asked.

“I think this is the first time? Unless I missed something vitally important?”

Stiles slapped his chest lightly.

“Lounged around together, I mean.”

“Sure,” Derek said, mind rushing back, “you’d just failed to run 3 miles.”

“It was a 5k, and I was sleepy.” Stiles mumbled, and Derek grinned at the sound.

“And you flopped on the ground beside the Camero and refused to get up—“

“While I caught my breath!”

“For like 15 minutes.”

“That doesn’t explain why you,” and Stiles poked him in the chest with two fingers, “decided to lay on top of me.”

“Hey, hey, that’s not how it started.”

“No, I really think it was. There’s no way I can move you if you don’t want to be moved, so when I ‘tripped’ you, and you ‘fell’,” Stiles this whole time was using exaggerated finger quotes with both hands, including the one he was worming under Derek’s side, “I think you just wanted to lay on me.”

“Maybe it was something like that—“

“Hah!”

“But you also tripped me. And when I tried to get up you grabbed the back of my neck, hooked your leg around the back of my leg, and begged me to ‘blanket-you’ because you were ‘cold.’” Derek said overusing quote marks in retaliation of Stiles’ remembered silliness.

“But you still lay down,” Stiles said, beginning to trace his fingers over Derek’s skin. He tried to repress a shudder, but failed utterly and he could feel Stiles smirk against his pec.

“I was trying to balance The Rules against the fun of being out in the wild with you, and they didn’t say anything about PDA, so yeah, I lay beside you and kept you warm until your heart rate stabilized a bit.”

“Of course that was the reason,” Stiles said, hand drifting up to a nipple but pausing, stopping just short of brushing.

“Of course not, I wanted to peel you out of youth clothes and give you something to be sore about, but that was out of bounds.”

Stiles ducked his head against Derek’s chest and finally slide his fingers over Derek’s nipple, first stroking across and then squeezing lightly.

“Tell me more about what you wanted to do to me.”

Derek paused for a moment, and then went on, Stiles pulling himself up on his elbow to get a better look at Derek laid out before him. The moonlight was strong now, leaving him in black-and-silver, hair on his nipples stark against his skin, stomach muscles pointing to a hard V at his hips. Stiles inched his body closer, settling his hip against the lower-curve of Derek’s ribs, smoothing his hand up and down the man’s chest.

“That particularly day? I think I wanted to straddle you, kiss you until your heart rate came back up. Have you kiss me like you needed it more than breathing. I think I wanted to run my hands down your chest, getting your smells on me, then work my mouth down your neck. I always want your smells on me, your shape in my mouth, so that’s probably about it.”

Stiles looked incredulous: “All you wanted was to kiss me?”

“Kissing would have been perfectly fine. But if you’d wanted? I would have pulled out the fire blanket and laid you out on it. I would have kissed you, working your shirt off your shoulders and your shorts off your hips until you were naked and golden under me. Then, using the magically-appearing lube that I can conjure in this fantasy, I would have started to work you open. A little bit at a time, just a brush here and a press there. Until you were begging for me.”

Stiles’ breath was coming faster, and his hand was pressing tightly, swirling closer and closer to Derek’s groin, curling down his prone body. But his eyes were fixed on Derek’s, never looking where his errant hand was going.

“I’d still keep working you open, making sure you knew what the stretch would feel like, what was coming, and then you would wrap your octopus legs around me, and pull me in. I’d brace my arm above your head,” and Stiles did this, hunching his torso over Derek’s as he began tracing invisible patterns down Derek’s thigh, circling back against and again to his pulsing cock, but never touching it.

“And you’d try to pull me in, try to get us completely together. But I would hold off, until you said the magic word,”

Stiles’ hand was hovering over Derek’s cock, a slight hip-tilt would have been enough to bring them into intentional contact.

“And that word is?” he asked, fingers trailing in the hair on either side of Derek’s cock, pulling up sensations, giving back pressure. He lowered his hand to a milliliter’s distance away, when Derek sat up, and whispered roughly in Stiles’ ear: “Please, please, I need you, please.”

Stiles let out a tiny “oh” before sliding his hand down Derek’s shaft, pulling the skin a little bit with it, and then pulling back up. He leaned his head down and kissed around his own fist. Derek had been avoiding fantasizing about Stiles’ mouth around his cock, but this left him entirely unprepared.

The heat and the pressure, he could imagine or remember. The sensation of a cat-rough tongue on his cock, tip pushing itself between his fingers, getting everything wet and slick, that was all more than he could have remembered.

Then Stiles started sucking. Derek lay back before he fell back, but the tension was too much.

It was all because it was _Stiles_. Stiles making small, appreciative noises at him, Stiles working his flexible mouth around and around and around Derek’s cock. Stiles’ short hair between his fingers and Stiles’ smooth him under his hand. Stiles pulled off and clambered over, to sit on Derek’s thighs, and all Derek could think of was every other time he’d seen Stiles move across the floor.

When he was being lazy and trying to get the remote; when they were playing “drunk baby!werewolf tag,” which was the first and the last time Derek let Stiles and the pack drink; when he was trying to get away from a creature bigger than he could handle.

That last thought sent a surge of protectiveness to his brain, and a thrust to his hips. Muttering in the back of his head, he started to hear: “Mine-mine-mine-mine.”  
  
But he forced that voice to be quiet. What his wolf wanted from this was not what it was going to get. Plenty of time elapsed in human-were relationships before any conversation about permanent monogamy happened. He did allow himself to settled a broad hand on the back of Stiles’ head, feeling each pull up and back as Stiles kissed and sucked and generally got him closer than he thought he would be this far in.

The sounds were mostly biological, smacks and groans and shifts of cloth and fingers in hair. He could hear the beginnings of his orgasm, much like he could hear a freight train coming by how the rails sang. Stiles started working his way towards Derek’s base, and the thought of Stiles going there, farther, back deeper while he was uncovered here on the floor, it brought him closer.

Then Stiles pulled off all of the way, grinning, and began kissing his way up Derek’s chest tense, pausing at his mouth for a quick hit before working his way down his other side. He could tell Derek was holding himself still, holding himself in check. With these, with each kiss he murmured something.

“I’m going to take you apart,” Accompanied the kiss between this third and fourth ribs.

“I’m going to mark you up,” he promised a hickie on Derek’s side, which faded slowly.

“I’ve been waiting so long, and you’re here, and you’re perfect.”

Stiles kissed Derel’s sternum, and as his hand was working its way up his thigh, to his cock. He paused, weight on his knees, torso taught from holding himself over Derek’s body. His head exactly above Derek’s and mouth soft and open for kissing. Stiles lifted a hand up and trailed the backs of his fingers down Derek’s face, even as the tips of his other hand’s fingers dipped down and gripped Derek’s slick length, pressing in a kiss at the same time.

Derek arched into the attention, a quickly-suppressed whine escaping his lips when Stiles pulled back and began working his way down the prone wolf’s body.

First: his pecs. Then: his solar plexus. Then: the tight draw of skin over his ribs. Derek was writhing, twisting under Stiles, quick shifts of muscle showing how much he wanted to move and writhe and _finish_.

When Derek’s cock filled his vision, Stiles didn’t hesitate. He licked the tip, letting out a little sound of pleasure when he remembered this was his, he could do what he wanted and what Derek wanted and he was _allowed_ to enjoy himself.

He licked again, this time taking in more of the taste and spreading the sensation to more than one mouth. With each lick, he heard Dereks gasp, and felt as his hands slowly drifted up to brush down the crown of his head to touch his shoulders. He kept this up, licking and humming with pleasure at the taste and textures, all while Derek continued to fall apart under his tongue.

Stiles’ other hand began to wander, tracing through wisps of air down beside Derek’ knee or trailing up the back of his bent leg, taut with withheld tension, feeling the bend and flex of muscles as he sucked down the Alpha.

He felt a touch on the back of his hand, and it was Derek’s fingers, seeking his out. He pulled off, and saw it was a blind search, because Derek’s head was flung all the way back on the rug, neck a study in shadows and moonlight. Stiles felt a heavy warmth settle from his heart to his stomach and leaned back down, gripping his hand back and whispering, breath fading over his cock,

“You can make sounds if you want to. You don’t have to be quiet with me.”

And Derek started. First, he stopped controlling his breath. His chest was wracked with gasps and shuddering inhales, then when Stiles pulled himself down his cock until his lips touched his forefinger, a gut-punched groan. Stiles felt Derek’s fingers grow tighter on his, tight past the point of comfort but he kept going, sensing a difference in the tension, figuring he only had a few more moments of this first time.

He pulled Derek as far back into his throat, holding onto his gag reflex as well as he could and glad Derek was keeping his hips still. He hummed and started to move up and down in earnest setting a rhythm that matched the clenching of Derek’s fingers around his, and grinned internally as he heard Derek’s breath lost all rhythm.

“I’m, it’s, I’m,” he tried to warn but Stiles kept his mouth on Derek, sure he was going to give back exactly what he’d gotten. He squeezed Derek’s fingers and stroked their combined hands down the side of his hip. Derek heard the permission for what it was and came, body writhing but hips still carefully controlled, coming down slowly as Stiles tried to swallow, failed, and cleaned up with a hastily-grabbed t-shirt.

Stiles looked up at Derek and saw he was still a bit lost, face more open than he’d seen it. Stiles smiled and scooted himself down, pillowing his head on the curve of Derek’s hip, softening cock behind his neck, body laid between Derek’s splayed legs. He catalogued smells and sounds, traced his fingers up and down Derek’s side to catch what touches he’d missed, and when he got bored of that, sat up to take in the man before him, trace in moonlight.

Eventually, Derek pulled himself together and Stiles smiled, saying:

“I vote we move this to the bed, for some cuddling and some sleeping.”  
  
Derek nodded, reaching out his hand for a standing-Stiles to pull him up by. Stiles pulled himself into Derek’s body once they were standing, burying his face in his neck:

“That was good. It was the best. We can try more things next time, yes?”  
  
Derek nodded, pressing a kiss to his crown:  
  
“That sounds like a plan.”

As they were setting themselves around each other, naked skin against naked skin for the first time, Stiles suddenly tensed, threw back the covers and raced out of the room. Bleary-eyed, Derek sat up, and called after him:

“Everything ok?”  
  
There was a sound of rustling, then pounding steps as Stiles came hurrying back, carrying both of their phones.

“Unlock your phone,” he demanded.

“Why.” Derek said.

“Because I asked you to and I just gave you a great orgasm, trust me on this, ok?”  
  
Derek grumbled but unlocked his phone, glaring when Stiles snatched it away again.

A moment later, Stiles held both of their phones up, with The Rules highlighted on each of their note-pads, thumb over the delete icon.

“I’m going to delete them,” he said, as his thumbs went in for the kill.

“Wait!” Derek said.

“Send us each copies, for posterity.” Stiles face relit and he did so, then handed the phones to Derek.

“You can do the honors.”  
  
“Happily,” he said, as he deleted The Rules. Then they curled up around each other, negotiating naked-space and smiling into their combined smells as they fell asleep together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone liked this! I'm finishing up as much of my unfinished fics to get them out of the way for NaNo/LSAT prep, so expect a burst of productivity. For people who really want to bondage option, I've got a few hundred words of it written up and it's one of the ones I'm hoping to finish up before 11/01. I love comments dearly, so please let me know if you liked a particular part!.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, this is me continuing to be inspired by skellerbvvt/skellerbzzt's amazing Arthur/Eames fic "Rule 10" (rec-ed to me by the incomparable Amuly): http://skellerbvvt.livejournal.com/71150.html
> 
> Also, come say hi on tumblr! I'm generally at jocarthage.tumblr.com


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